














' 





















Eighty Years of Union 

Being a Short History of the United States 
1783-1865 



By 

JAMES SCHOULER 



NEW YORK 

DODD, MEAD & COMPANY 

1903 






THE. LIBRARY OF 
CONFESS, 

Two Copies Received 

OCT 1903 

Copyright fcntry 

CLASS ft XXe. No j 
' COPY B. I 



Copyright, 1880, 1882, 1885, 1889, 1891, 1894, 1899, 1903 
By James Schouler. 



Published September, 1903. 



ci 



-J\ 



BURR PRINTING HOUSE, 
NEW YORK. 



PUBLISHERS' NOTICE 

THE present book of moderate size, which has 
been prepared at the special request of some 
eminent educators, pursues the plan lately 
favored in "The Struggle for a Continent" by the 
publishers of Mr. Parkman's histories. Instead of 
abridgment or condensation of the materials com- 
prised in the original work, a selection has been made 
of suitable passages, so that the reader may have be- 
fore him a consecutive narrative, in the historian's own 
words and original expression, so far as the present 
space permits. 

The literary advantage of such a treatment is ob- 
vious. And it is hoped that the present volume will 
be found both useful and stimulating to the busy stu- 
dent and casual general reader, whether as embodying 
a substitute for the author's more comprehensive work 
of six volumes, or so as to induce in due time their 
closer perusal. For ample details and a broader treat- 
ment of this earliest epoch of our nation's history in 
the full push of progression the original work should 
still be studied ; but within the present compass of some 
four hundred pages the general thread of the narra- 
tive will be found preserved. The author has person- 
ally supervised this publication. 

August 22, 1903. 



CONTENTS 



The references in parenthesis are to the volume and pages of 
the original History of the United States from which extracts are 
made for the present volume. 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

PAGE 

§ I. The Thirteen Confederate States, 1783-87.— § II. The 
Constitutional Convention, May 14-September 17, 1787. — 
§ III. A More Perfect Union, 1787-1789. 

The United States of America in 1783 (I, 1-5) 1 

Hamilton and Madison as reformers (I, 26-32) 4 

Origin of our political parties (I, 53-60) 9 

Struggle of Federalists and Anti-Federalists (I, 60-69) 12 

CHAPTER II. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

§ I. Period of First Congress. March 4, 1789-March 3, 1791. 
— § II. Period of Second Congress. March 4, 1791- 
March 3, 1793. 

Washington's inauguration at New York (I, 84-89) 14 

The First Congress; ceremonials, etc. (I, 117, 118) 20 

Appointments and executive rules (I, 1 19-124) 22 

Washington as President; his character (I, 1 18-139) 25 

Franklin and the Quaker memorial (I, 160-165) 35 

Executive intercourse with the Senate (I, 179, 180) 35 

New party movements and leaders (I, 219, 220) 36 



vi CONTENTS 



CHAPTER III. 

PAGE 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

§ I. Period of Third Congress. March 4, 1793-March 3, 1795. 
— § II. Period of Fourth Congress. March 4, 1795- 
March 3, 1797. 

Immigration and the pioneer life (I, 239-245) 39 

Philadelphia as capital; yellow fever (I, 250-255).. 45 

Politics affected by European war (I, 259, 260) 50 

Jefferson and Hamilton leave cabinet (I, 270-274) 50 

Jay's treaty with England (I, 308-311) 52 

Speech of Fisher Ames (I, 328, 329) 54 

Washington's Farewell Address (I, 345, 346) 57 

CHAPTER IV. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN ADAMS. 

§ I. Period of Fifth Congress. March 4, 1797-March 3, 1799. 
— § II. Period of Sixth Congress. March 4, 1799-March 
3, 1801. 

Adams inaugurated President (I, 354-356) 59 

Naturalization, Alien and Sedition acts (I, 410-413) 62 

Kentucky and Virginia resolutions (I, 434, 435) 64 

Party cabals ; death of Washington (I, 462-464) 66 

Washington City the capital (I, 487-490) 68 

Tie of Jefferson and Burr; House elects President (I, 490- 

494) °9 

Adams's administration reviewed (I, 505-512) 71 

Downfall of Federalist party (I, 512-514) 79 

CHAPTER V. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

§ I. Period of Seventh Congress. March 4, 1801-March 3. 
1803.— § II. Period of Eighth Congress. March 4, 1803- 
March 3, 1805. 

Jefferson's inauguration (II, 1-5) 83 

Appointments to office ; cabinet (II, 6-15) 86 

Federalists in retirement (II, 32, 33) 89 

The Louisiana purchase (II, 52-58) °o 

Duel and death of Hamilton (II, 70-74) 92 



CONTENTS vii 



PAGE 

Secretaries Madison and Gallatin (II, 78-80) 96 

Territories and the Indians (II, 85) 98 

Jefferson at the White House (II, 90-94) 09 

CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

§ I. Period of Ninth Congress. March 4, 1805-March 3,1807. 
— § II. Period of Tenth Congress. March 4, 1807-March 
3. 1809. 

British impressment and search (II, 115-118) 104 

Burr's conspiracy and trial (II, 133-138) 106 

Abolition of foreign slave trade (II, 145-147) 108' 

Napoleon and Great Britain (II, 174-176) 109 

Decrees against neutral nations (II, 176) in 

President Jefferson's embargo (II, 180-183) I 12 

Failure of embargo (II, 197, 108, 217) 115 

Retirement of Jefferson (II, 222-225) 117 

Jefferson's character (II, 225-228) 120 

Jefferson's friendships (II, 228, 229) 125 

CHAPTER VII. 

THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA IN 1809. 

New influence of Republic (II, 230) 127 

State constitutional systems (II, 235-237) 127 

Veto power and bill of rights (II, 239-241) 130 

Agriculture and manufactures (II, 242-248) 132 

American commerce and speculation (II, 248, 249) 133 

Opportunities of the Jefferson era (II, 309) 135 

CHAPTER VIII. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MADISON. 

§ I. Period of Eleventh Congress. March 4, 1809-March 3, 
181 1. — § II. Period of Twelfth Congress. March 4, 
1811-March 3, 1813. 

Republican party trusted (II, 331-333) x 3^ 

Repeal of non-intercourse with offer (II, 336, 337) 137 



viii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

Napoleon accepts; Great Britain refuses (II, 339"34i) 137 

Twelfth Congress and spirited leaders (II, 37*) x 39 

Clay for Speaker; Calhoun's speech (II, 372-379) *39 

Leaders prevail with Madison (II, 387, 388) 143 

War against Great Britain (II, 395) • • • x 44 

Orders of Council tardily suspended; Clay's speech (II, 414- 

416) 145 

CHAPTER IX. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MADISON. 

§ I. Period of Thirteenth Congress. March 4, 1813-March 3, 
1815. — § II. Period of Fourteenth Congress. March 4, 
1815-March 3, 1817. 

The Hartford Convention (II, 473-476) 147 

News of peace with victory (II, 476-491) 149 

America's final divorce from Europe (II, 492) 149 

Results of war ; lessons taught (II, 501, 502) 150 

Monroe chosen President (II, 510-512) 153 

Overtures to reconciliation; Monroe and Jackson (II, 512, 

513) • J53 

Madison's career reviewed (II, 513-516) 154 

CHAPTER X. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MONROE. 

§ I. Period of Fifteenth Congress. March 4, 1817-March 3, 
1819.— § II. Period of Sixteenth Congress. March 4, 
1819-March 3, 1821. 

Monroe's inauguration (III, 1-3) 157 

New policy and opportunities (III, 1-6) 159 

Monroe and Washington (III, 7) 162 

Eastern tour ; era of good feeling (III, 8-16) 164 

Clay and Crawford ; Clay in opposition (III, 17-20, 34) 166 

Spanish- American revolution (III, 25, 26) 169 

Decay of parties; new symptoms (III, 43-47) 171 

Internal improvements (III, 54, 55) 173 

Jackson's popularity (III, 61-64, 84) 174 



CONTENTS ix 



PAGE 

Jackson and Jefferson (III, 65, 66) 177 

The Seminole war (III, 84) 177 

A national sentiment; Florida, etc. (Ill, 107-109) 178 

Financial distress of 1819-20 (III, 120, 121) 180 

Foreign relations ; Spain (III, 121, 122) 181 

American slavery reviewed (III, 134-137) 182 

Southern planting interests (III, 145-147) 185 

The Missouri controversy (III, 147-170) 187 

Compromise of North and South (III, 171-173) 187 

CHAPTER XL 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MONROE. 

§ I. Period of Seventeenth Congress. March 4, 1821-March 

3, 1823. — § II. Period of Eighteenth Congress. March 

4, 1823-March 3, 1825. 

Character of Monroe (III, 202-206) 190 

Appearance and manners (III, 206-208) 193 

Washington City in 1821 (III, 212-214) 195 

Social life at the capital (III, 215) 198 

Census of 1820; New York's advance (III, 229-231)........ 199 

Calhoun a national leader (III, 261-266) 201 

Plans of Holy Alliance (III, 286, 287) 203 

Monroe's famous message (III, 287-289) 204 

The Monroe doctrine (III, 288-291) 205 

Clay and Webster as leaders (III, 298, 299) 207 

Webster's oratory (III, 299-302) 208 

Lafayette's visit; Monroe's peaceful retirement (III, 334, 335) 211 

CHAPTER XII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

§ I. Period of Nineteenth Congress. March 4, 1825-March 
3, 1827. — § II. Period of Twentieth Congress. March 4, 
1827-March 3, 1829. 

Era of good feeling ends (III, 336, 337) 214 

Calhoun and John Randolph (III, 369, 370) 215 

Adams's administration reviewed (III, 398-407) 216, 218 

The two Adamses compared (III, 398, 399) 217 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER XIII. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JACKSON. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-first Congress. March 4, 1829-March 
3, 1831.— § II. The United States in 1831.— § III. Period 
of Twenty-second Congress. March 4, 183 1 -March 3, 
1833. 

Jackson inaugurated ; the people's day (III, 451-453) 228 

Spoils of office (III. 453-460) 230 

Calhoun and the nullifiers (III, 482) 232 

The Hayne and Webster debate (III, 482-486) 234 

Liberty and union (III, 486) 237 

The Union in 1831 (III, 507) 238 

American character (III, 512-514) 238 

American manners ( IV, 4, 5 ) 243 

American methods in business (IV, 5-8) 245 

Growth of the West (IV, 27, 28) 247 

Calhoun's disappointed ambition (IV, 36-39) 250 

High and low tariffs (IV, 55-58) 251 

A new campaign ; party names changing (IV, 72-77) 253 

Tariff nullification in 1833 (IV, 98, 99, 108) 255 

Calhoun in the Senate (IV, 109-111) 257 

CHAPTER XIV. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JACKSON. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-third Congress. March 4, 1833- 
March 3, 1835. — § H. Period of Twenty-fourth Congress. 
March 4, 1835-March 3, 1837. 

Jackson's zenith of popularity (IV, 112-115) 261 

Errors of his second term (IV, 115) 264 

Jackson's eastern tour (IV, 119-121) 265 

Modes of travel ; stage, canal, etc. (IV, 124) 267 

Era of the railway (IV, 125-127) 268 

John Quincy Adams in the House (IV, 185-188) 270 

Whig party formed; Whigs and Democrats (IV, 191-196) . . 273 

New public disorders (IV, 201, 202) 278 

Garrison and the Abolitionists (IV, 210-213) 279 



CONTENTS xi 



PAGE 

Taney succeeds Marshall ; the Supreme Court (IV, 232, 233) . 282 

Jackson's administration reviewed (IV, 265-272) 283 

Character of Jackson (IV, 268-272) 286 

Jackson and Jefferson contrasted (IV, 272, 273) 291 

CHAPTER XV. 

ADMINISTRATION OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-fifth Congress. March 4, 1837-March 

3, 1839. — § II. Period of Twenty-sixth Congress. March 

4, 1839-March 3, 1841. 

Disaster and the independent treasury (IV, 283, 284) 293 

Alliance of Seward, Weed and Greeley (IV, 331-334) .... 295 
Van Buren's defeat ; his character (IV, 349-352) 297 

CHAPTER XVI. 

ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. 

Period of Twenty-seventh Congress. March 4, 1841- 
April 4, 1841. 

Early death of Harrison (IV, 364-366) 301 

CHAPTER XVII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN TYLER. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-seventh Congress. April 4, 1841- 
March 3, 1843.— § II. Period of Twenty-eighth Con- 
gress. March 4, 1843-March 3, 1845. 

Succession of Vice-President (IV, 367, 368) 304 

Tyler's past record (IV, 370-372) 304 

Fugitive slaves and State collision (IV, 427, 428) 307 

Single-term theory; Tyler's apostasy (IV, 431, 432) 308 

Tyler's annexation scheme (IV, 440) 310 

Conventions and the electric telegraph (IV, 469, 470) 311 

Texas annexation in Congress (IV, 486, 487) 312 

Tyler takes the responsibility (IV, 487, 488) 313 

Tyler's character (IV, 491-494) 314 



xii CONTENTS 



PAGE 

CHAPTER XVIII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES KNOX POLK. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-ninth Congress. March 4, 1845- 
March 3, 1847.— § II. The Mexican War. May, 1846- 
September, 1847. — § III. Period of Thirtieth Congress. 
March 4, 1847-March 3, 1849. 

Polk as Chief Executive (IV, 496-498) 317 

The Oregon settlement (IV, 514) 320 

Polk's low-tariff policy (IV, 514-516) 320 

Texas annexation and the Mexican War (IV, 518, 519) 322 

War; the railway, telegraph and post-office (IV, 549, 550) . . 324 

Generals Scott and Taylor (V, 3-8) 325 

Conquest and the Wilmot proviso (V, 66-70) 331 

Lincoln and Davis in Congress (V, 76-79) 334 

Death of Adams at the Capitol (V, 88-90) 337 

Spoliation of Mexico (V, 123, 124) 339 

Polk's character and death (V, 125-127) 340 

CHAPTER XIX. 

ADMINISTRATION OF ZACHARY TAYLOR. 

Period of Thirty-first Congress. March 4, 1849-July 9, 1850. 

Our new Pacific acquisition (V, 129, 130) 343 

California gold and a new free State (V, 152) 345 

Slavery's dismay ; portents of disunion (V, 154) 346 

The Senate speeches of March, 1850 (V, 170-172) 347 

Seward's "higher law"; Calhoun dies (V, 171) 349 

Taylor and the Senate plan (V, 189) 349 

Taylor's sudden death (V, 189, 190) 349 

CHAPTER XX. 

ADMINISTRATION OF MILLARD FILLMORE. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-first Congress. July 9, 1850-March 3, 
1851. — § II. Period of Thirty-second Congress. March 
4, 1851-March 3, 1853. 

Eulogy and the succession (V, 191, 192) 352 

Fillmore accepts the Clay plan (V, 192) 353 



CONTENTS xiii 



PAGE 

Compromise measures of 1850 (V, 204-208) 354 

Anti-slavery sentiment coerced (V, 213, 214) 355 

New attitude of parties (V, 242, 243) 356 

Deaths of Clay and Webster (V, 245-248) 357 

Democrats elect President; downfall of Whig party (V, 249) 359 
Fillmore's administration reviewed (V, 257, 258) . . 360 



CHAPTER XXI. 

ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-third Congress. March 4, 1853-March 

3, 1855. — § II. Period of Thirty-fourth Congress. March 

4, 1855-March 3, 1857. 

Douglas and the Kansas-Nebraska bill; squatter sovereignty 

(V, 279, 280) 363 

Missouri Compromise of 1820 violated (V, 289-292) 364 

The North aroused; new political fusion (V, 301-303) 367 

Party movements; Know Nothings, etc. (V, 304, 305) 369 

Fredom or slavery in Kansas (V, 315-321) 370 

New Republican party at the North (V, 351-356) 372 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-fifth Congress. March 4, 1857-March 

3, 1858.— § II. Period of Thirty-sixth Congress. March 

4, 1859-March 3, 1861. 

National Democracy perverted (V, 371, 372) 374 

Rebellion in Utah (V, 403, 404) 375 

Douglas and Lincoln in Illinois (V, 411-413) 377 

New territorial dogmas (V, 414) 380 

The "irrepressible conflict" (V, 415) 381 

Southern territorial demands ( V, 428-430) 382 

John Brown's invasion (V, 443, 444) 385 

Democratic schism; Republicans at Chicago (V, 457-459) .... 386 

Lincoln nominated and elected President (V, 460) 389 

President Buchanan falters (V, 472-474) 390 



xiv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Secession and a Southern Confederacy (V, 474, 475) 391 

Approach of civil war (V, 507-511) 392 

Washington a beleaguered city (V, 511, 512) 396 

SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 

ADMINISTRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.* 

March 4, 1861 — April 15, 1865. 

Lincoln's administration reviewed : personal character (VI, 

624-633) 398 

Fame of Lincoln; his reconciling disposition (VI, 632, 633) . . 407 

♦See foot-note on page 408. 



INDEX 409 



EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 



CHAPTER I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

§ I. The Thirteen Confederate States, 1783-87.— § II. The Con- 
stitutional Convention, May 14-September 17, 1787. — § III. 
A More Perfect Union, 1787- 1789. 

AT the close of our Revolution the Union States 
of America comprised the same thirteen re- 
publics whose representatives, assembled at 
Independence Hall, had, in the name of the American 
people, so boldly flung defiance at George III. seven 
years earlier, declaring the united colonies absolved 
from all allegiance to the British crown. "Free and 
independent States," they were then proclaimed ; right- 
fully free and independent of the mother country, the 
king was after a long and stubborn contest compelled to 
acknowledge them. But meantime, they had, by mutual 
assent, advanced to the condition of a confederacy, in- 
tended to be perpetual, whose style, never since relin- 
quished, was foreshown in their charter of inde- 
pendence.* 

* As to the style, " United States of America," cf. Articles of 
Confederation, Art. 1 ; Constitution of United States, Preamble : 
Declaration of Independence, closing paragraph. These were the 
old thirteen Colonies or States: New Hampshire, Massachusetts 
(or Massachusetts Bay), of which at this time Maine constituted 
a district, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, 
Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, 
South Carolina, and Georgia. 



2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Though covering less than one-fourth of its present 
territorial space, the domain of the United States was 
at this period vast, and, as compared with European 
nations, magnificent; comprising an area, in fact, so 
great for experimenting in self-government that saga- 
cious statesmen of the Old World prophesied with con- 
fidence a speedy failure. On the east and west the 
United States had natural boundaries, the Atlantic 
Ocean and the broad Mississippi. The chain of great 
lakes stood out like a bastion on the northern or British 
frontier, whose line, however, ran unevenly, and at the 
northeast and northwest corners promised occasion for 
further dispute. The southern boundary, fixed by the 
treaty of peace at parallel 30 , was the most uncertain 
and unsatisfactory of all ; for leaving out of view what 
the parties to that treaty might themselves have in- 
tended, the title of the neighboring possessions vested 
substantially in Spain, a stealthy foe to the United 
States, who had artfully kept out of the negotiations 
at Paris, and still guarded, as well as her decaying 
strength would permit, the mouth of the Mississippi 
and the Gulf coast. 

Fortunately for our infant confederacy, the present 
sparseness of population on these long frontiers favored 
a postponement of controversies, which the law of 
human increase must eventually have determined in her 
own favor. Of the extensive jurisdiction possessed by 
virtue of her own sovereignty, and that of individual 
States, much was a wilderness, given over to the bear 
and bison and their red pursuer ; woods and canebrakes 
marked the sites of cities since illustrious. Log-forts 
and trading-posts were the precursors of civilization 
on the northwestern frontier; and Great Britain's delay 
in surrendering them according to the terms of the 



BOUNDARIES AND POPULATION 3 

treaty, for which one and another pretext was assigned, 
proved a serious hindrance to the settlement of that 
region. South of the Ohio River a movement from 
Virginia and the States adjacent, into what was called 
the Kentucky country, had already begun. But nearly 
the whole population of the United States was at that 
time confined to the eastern slope of the Appalachian 
Mountains. Commercial traffic kept the inhabitants 
close to the sea and its immediate tributaries. New 
York State, west of the Schenectady cornfields, re- 
mained an Indian country, the home of the once war- 
like Five Nations. The American Union was in effect 
an Atlantic confederacy; every State bordered upon 
that ocean or its tide-waters, whose eastern waves 
washed Europe; and to the Americans of 1783 who 
turned westward, the blue Alleghanies seemed as re- 
mote as did the Pillars of Hercules to the ancients. 

The total population of the United States in 1783 
may be estimated at somewhat less than three and a 
half million souls, or only one-eleventh of the number 
of inhabitants shown by the census of 1870. This pop- 
ulation appears to have been distributed in three nearly 
equal portions : New England holding one-third ; an- 
other belonging to the Middle States, namely, New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware ; while 
the Southern States took the residue. Virginia, Massa- 
chusetts, and Pennsylvania were the most populous 
States of the confederacy; Georgia and Rhode Island 
the least. 

Not all of these three and a half millions, scarcely 
more, probably, than four-fifths of them, could be reck- 
oned as free inhabitants. Allowing for some fifty thou- 
sand free persons of color scattered through the coun- 
try, there must have been at this period no less than 



4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

six hundred thousand men, women, and children, held 
in servitude to white masters, and utterly denied the 
exercise of political rights. They were of African 
origin ; and so conspicuous a part in colonizing the New 
World had been borne by this traffic with the dark 
continent, that American slavery, unlike that familiar 
in the records of ancient history, came to exist purely 
as a race institution; as the subjection, not of debtors 
or vanquished enemies, but of an alien, uncouth-looking 
people, whom the Caucasian could hardly regard with- 
out mirth and contempt, even when moved to compas- 
sion for their wrongs. Such a slavery is the hardest 
of all to eradicate from a community ; for the oppressed 
must win genuine respect before the oppressor will 
admit him to full companionship and social equality, 
and slow must be that opportunity. 

The resistless logic of one burning sentence, seared 
into the American mind for nearly a century, has, more 
than all else that was ever written or spoken, wrought 
the downfall of slave institutions in the United States. 
That sentence, the statement of truths "self-evident" 
in the Declaration of Independence, found its way into 
one State constitution after another. It has been for 
successive generations a bosom text; and incorporated 
moreover into the charters of Spanish- American repub- 
lics as yet less favored, it serves everywhere as an inspi- 
ration to struggling humanity. 



Two young men now appear upon the scene, whose 
six years of united labor did more for establishing our 
present constitutional union than the work of any other 
ten Americans, Washington, perhaps, excepted, in 
whom both confided, and whose prodigious personal in- 



HAMILTON AND MADISON 5 

fluence was discreetly used to promote their ends. These 
were Alexander Hamilton, of New York, and James 
Madison, of Virginia; each representing a powerful 
State averse to Federal aggrandizement, which must 
nevertheless he won over ; and both at the threshold of a 
great national career. 

The younger, and undoubtedly the more brilliant of 
the two, was Hamilton, a man of slight figure but 
strongly impressive presence, erect in bearing, singu- 
larly self-possessed, having the air of a Caesar. His 
face was a handsome one, such as dangerously capti- 
vates women, and beamed with intelligence; he had an 
eye piercing and expressive, a firm-set mouth which be- 
tokened promptness and decision of character, an open 
and fearless countenance. His was one of those rare 
minds whence leap ideas clad in full armor. He would 
not only unfold a plan of his own so as to present the 
strongest arguments for its adoption, but anticipate 
every objection and counterplan which others would be 
likely to urge against it. His talent as an administra- 
tor was remarkable ; neither principle nor detail escaped 
him; he conceived and executed with equal facility. 
This mind of marvellous fertility, this self-confidence 
which inspired by its audacity, were the endowments 
of a youth as yet scarcely turned of twenty-five. But 
this prodigy, the idol of aristocratic circles in New 
York, and a recognized leader of the American bar, 
was weighted in the race for public honors, as preco- 
cious men are apt to be, by his own excess of confidence, 
his impetuosity, and the disposition to force rather than 
inculcate the measures upon which he had set his heart. 
He had not great tact, but set his foot contemptuously 
to work the treadles of slower minds. Hence Hamil- 
ton devised better than he could bring to pass, and, 



6 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

wounding the pride of rivals whose co-operation was 
indispensable to success, he got unhorsed when he 
should have been spurring on. His political follow- 
ing was always strong, but he suffered that of his oppo- 
nents to become stronger, which proved his own bad 
generalship. 

But more than this, Hamilton was not a stanch be- 
liever in republics or the American experiment. He 
was not American, but a Briton, transplanted and fed 
upon Plutarch. An alien, of obscure parentage in the 
British West Indies, and one of desultory training, he 
remained, except for the influence of his ancient he- 
roes, British in temperament through life, an adapter 
of British institutions and methods, like a tailor who 
fits different coats from the same pattern. Equality, 
social or political, he did not relish, though he was a 
friend of negro emancipation. Popular government, 
our latter-day rule of public opinion, he never could and 
never wished to comprehend. He wished "good men," 
as he termed them, to rule; meaning the wealthy, the 
well-born, the socially eminent, like those among whom 
he moved in his adopted city. No aristocrat is more 
confirmed than one admitted into the charmed circle, 
whose own kindred are at a convenient distance; and 
Hamilton's claim to social recognition no Whig could 
dispute after Washington had taken him into his mili- 
tary family, and Schuyler given him a daughter in mar- 
riage. Self-reliance, self-confidence, with its usual at- 
tendant faults and virtues, sprang necessarily out of 
such a life; and the passion for fame had burned 
strongly in his boyish bosom before either a country 
or a cause could be discerned. Hamilton had a high 
sense of honor, certainly, an ambition which respected 
the verdict of history. His ideal of government was 



HAMILTON AND MADISON 7 

not, however, a high one ; for he believed that mankind 
were to be managed and cajoled by some magnanimous 
ruler. Crude suggestions like these pervaded his best 
schemes of^civil polity; giving an impression which 
careless conversations might have confirmed, that 
Hamilton was at heart a despiser of commonplace hap- 
piness, a hero-worshipper, and, theoretically at least, a 
British monarchist. And indeed there was that about 
him. which might perhaps have rendered him a dan- 
gerous man under European surroundings ; for, besides 
rating his military above his own civil qualities, Ham- 
ilton displayed self-will, a certain capriciousness of 
temper, an unquenchable thirst for glory and distinc- 
tion, and a tendency to the false illusions of fatalism 
and the romance of manifest destiny. But Hamilton's 
ambition was noble, incapable at all events of mean 
intrigue for the sake of personal advancement; if ever 
fame's conqueror, he would have wished to be a gener- 
ous one; and the dream of empire could only be ful- 
filled when the crisis demanded the man. That crisis 
never came; and for moving a world whose leverage 
was the average sense of the people, one of this temper 
could hope for little permanent opportunity. 

A far different man was Madison ; six years Hamil- 
ton's senior, and yet a young leader for so crowded an 
hour. He, too, was of under-stature, and when 
starched up to his full dignity had not a little prim- 
ness of aspect. His manners were reserved and shy, 
like one given to serious contemplation; the color of his 
cheeks came and went; strangers were impressed by 
him as by some plain gentleman farmer. But enter- 
ing Congress young, Madison was not long in con- 
vincing his colleagues of his real sterling qualities, 
prominent among which were industry, method, pa- 



8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tience, soundness of judgment, calmness of temper, 
and unimpeachable integrity. His leadership was all 
the more readily conceded by elders, none of whom 
were superiors, inasmuch as he was perceived to be 
a youth of singular modesty and discretion. Unlike 
Hamilton, Madison was a man of peace, whose sole 
ambition was directed to the pursuit of civil adminis- 
tration under American methods and by convincing 
other minds. American-born, the scion of an influen- 
tial family in the Old Dominion, educated at Princeton 
College, — the nursery in that era of American states- 
men, — a man of independent means, he was a product 
thoroughly indigenous; and having joined the new 
school of aristo-democrats in his native State to be- 
come a disciple and favorite of Jefferson, it is not 
strange that he devoted his talents to public life, nor 
that so doing, he was on the highroad to success. 
There was none of that personal magnetism in Madi- 
son such as warmed men's hearts to Hamilton or Jef- 
ferson, but neither did he repel, and the respect of his 
opponents he rarely lost. He had remarkable aptitude 
for avoiding personal quarrels. As a debater, Madi- 
son moved others by his lucid, dispassionate, judicial 
style of reasoning, not by a fiery appeal. His es- 
pousal of reform was directed to plucking the fruit as 
it ripened; he seemed, indeed, an umpire at this era. 
rather than a party-man, feeling, to use his favorite 
expression, for some middle ground. Mediocrity which 
forbears will win more in politics than a genius which 
irritates; but Madison, though a statesman of inferior 
fibre to Hamilton, was far above the average. The 
danger was, that a youth of such sobriety might efflor- 
esce into a tasteless and timid manhood. 

The complement of two such minds was most aus- 



HAMILTON AND MADISON 9 

picious for the country. The cause in which they now 
heartily conjoined, as never in later years, was that 
of procuring a federal government whose powers 
should be commensurate with the needs of the country. 
Their prominence at this date was favored by the sin- 
gular dearth of famous popular leaders for the preg- 
nant occasion. James Otis was dead. Patrick Henry's 
influence helped to swell State pride, and so did that of 
George Clinton. Hancock and Samuel Adams ap- 
peared lukewarm Unionists, better able to pull down 
than build up, and both were for the time in retire- 
ment. Jefferson and John Adams had diplomatic posts 
abroad. The aged Franklin, just returning from his 
famous mission at France to find himself elected chief 
executive of Pennsylvania under an ill-jointed consti- 
tution, had enough care in holding that distracted com- 
monwealth together. Of all the patriots who had been 
foremost in the cause of independence, only John Jay 
and Robert Morris remained in the home service, and 
they in such routine employment as forbade the at- 
tempt of either to direct a popular movement. Wash- 
ington himself, not unconscious of his surpassing influ- 
ence, was too delicate and just a man to conduct a 
popular revolution whose most likely issue would be 
to place him at the head of affairs ; and, keeping in re- 
serve, he left others to guide, particularly his two young 
friends, one of whom he was connected with by neigh- 
borly ties, and the other he loved like an own son. In 
private correspondence he avowed himself in favor of 
liberal amendments ; or, as a last resort, the convention. 



We are now led to inquire briefly into the origin of 
political parties in the United States. 



io EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

The two great subjects which most enlist, and at 
the same time distract, the passions and opinions of 
mankind, are religion and politics; and the more uni- 
versal in church or state the concession of a right to 
think and act independently, the stronger becomes the 
tendency of the mass to separate into parties. Progress 
is the law of our being ; but the true direction of human 
progress is stated differently; and, whether to accom- 
plish or check innovation, men combine under choice 
leaders and concert plans for influencing their fellow- 
men. In some wiser age, when truth triumphs, and 
passion puts out her torch, a general assimilation, or 
at least toleration of views is possible, but such an age 
history has never found. Nor is it certain that indi- 
vidualism and indifference are the elements of a per- 
pect state of society, more than blind submission to an 
authority which refuses to be questioned. 

Among ancient nations, the Athenian and Roman 
republics more especially, flourished political parties, 
whose best achievement was to advance the condition 
of the common people and give them a share in honors 
at first absorbed by a privileged class. Modern parties 
have a similar tendency. But while human nature is 
always the same, the conditions of the old and new 
civilization greatly differ. Political parties take their 
best scope where the general love of liberty is pure; 
where thought and action are free; and where political 
results may be worked out in a common subservience 
to law and order. After all, a party is but a political 
agency, an instrument of the people; and the agent or 
servant should not be above his master. 

The first political fact of American history to con- 
front us is that in each colony during the early period 
a controversy, waged between proprietaries and the 



EARLY POLITICAL PARTIES n 

body of settlers, ended in the transfer of fundamental 
authority from the former class to legislatures repre- 
senting the latter. Those privileged to rule under the 
royal seal and mandate yielded, however reluctantly, 
to the demands of a popular rights party. 

Political parties must, therefore, have contended on 
American soil in the earliest era of colonization; rad- 
ically distinguished, perhaps, though not wholly unsel- 
fish, by the distrust of the one and the confidence of 
the other in man's capacity for self-government. One 
party set much by privilege, royalty, and the power to 
compel; the other was jealous of external authority, 
and its champions were in heart more nearly rebels 
against Great Britain than they cared to own. Re- 
ligion tinctured these early onsets, which fortunately 
drew little blood ; but the friends of popular rights and 
religious freedom were by no means coincident. 

After the accession of William and Mary, Amer- 
ica was ruled with a stronger hand; the home 
policy being now to recall settlers to their alle- 
giance, repress tendencies to popular rule in disregard 
of the royal charters, and keep the Colonies disunited. 
Less responsible for the course of their own affairs, 
the colonists now grew more observant of events 
abroad, of parliamentary statutes and orders in coun- 
cil. To the new generation American politics had be- 
come the mere reflex of what was passing in the world 
of London. Hence came the British party names, 
"Whig" and "Tory," into vogue among Americans, 
with, perhaps, this prime distinction, that the colonial 
Tory was a British subject to the core, through all 
colonial oppression, while the colonial Whig believed, 
with Locke, in deriving government from the common 
consent of the governed: that theory so cherished by 



12 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

our earlier colonists, and asserted, somewhat illogi- 
cally, by Parliament itself for justifying the final 
expulsion of the Stuarts. Loyalty animated the one 
set, while the other ripened insensibly for independence. 

When the war ended, the Whig name had been swal- 
lowed up in that broader one of patriot and American. 
As for Tories, the few who had not fled remained in po- 
litical obscurity, irresponsible as to passing events, 
State pride now increased as the Union lanquished. 
The road to popularity in each State was to inspire an 
unfounded jealousy of the powers of Congress. But 
political issues from 1783 to 1787 were chiefly local 
and uninteresting. 

On the whole the tendency of parties from 1783 to 
1787 was to denationalize and crumble into fragments. 
An organization of national parties, on voting issues, 
was indeed unknown in America prior to the Philadel- 
phia Convention. 



But no sooner was the plan of a new Federal con- 
stitution published than the political mustering began. 
Local issues were postponed or absorbed into the 
broader national one, and in a brief space the whole 
country was studded with the camps of two great 
political parties. The initiative in this short and sharp 
campaign belonged, of course, to the friends of the pro- 
posed constitution. With that diversion of epithets 
for political effect which is so common where partisans 
have the chance to name opponents as well as them- 
selves, the constitutionalists called themselves Feder- 
alists, and their adversaries Anti-Federalists. The 
party name of Federalist has since become historical; 
and yet, to speak logically, it was the Anti-Federal 



FEDERALISTS— ANTI-FEDERALISTS 13 

party that sustained a federal plan, while the Federalist 
contended for one more nearly national. 

Between these two parties the people balanced in 
opinion. The press and platform offered a common 
medium for persuasion, and for the next ten months 
America became a debating-school. 

The Massachusetts Convention turned the scales; 
ratification was carried, but with the proposal of essen- 
tial amendments to be later adopted. That action decided 
the country, though too slowly for the Anti-Federalists 
to perceive their danger or how they had been out- 
flanked. It was not alone the example of this essential 
State, but her methods of amendment, that solved the 
whole difficulty with the people at the right moment. 
This flank movement literally saved the Federalist 
cause from disaster; for the constitution as it came 
from Philadelphia could not have been carried, as events 
proved. Had the Anti-Federalists of other States 
wisely accepted this as a compromise, their party might 
have claimed half the triumph of a bill of rights. But, 
with their strongest position turned, they now took their 
narrow stand upon utter rejection, reckless of what 
this might lead to. The Federalists, with more intelli- 
gence, made the new resource their own. Immediate 
acceptance with a generous trust that amendments 
would follow, became rather their ground of appeal; 
and confiding rightly in the good sense of the people, 
they insured to themselves not only victory but the best 
fruits of it. 



CHAPTER II. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

§ I. Period of First Congress. March 4, 1789-March 3, 1791. — 
§ II. Period of Second Congress. March 4, 1791-March 3, 1793. 

IN New York City, at two in the afternoon, one 
pleasant Thursday in April, a large concourse of 
people, assembled at the Battery and neighboring 
wharves, were gazing with strained eyes down the bay. 
Holiday tokens appeared on every hand. The vessels 
, 7 8 9 in the harbor, prominent among which were 
April a3 . tri e ship N or th Carolina and a Spanish 
packet, the Galveston, lay at anchor, their colors danc- 
ing in the breeze. The American flag was displayed 
from the fort, from old Federal Hall (where now 
stands the United States custom-house), and from 
various State and municipal buildings. Stores and 
dwelling-houses along the line of Wall and Queen 
streets flaunted streamers, mottoes, and various patri- 
otic emblems. The crowd was greatest near the foot of 
Wall Street ; here humanity surged, and scarcely a win- 
dow was ungraced by feminine faces, sharing the gen- 
eral expression of happy expectation. The stairs at 
the landing-place of Murray's wharf had been carpeted, 
and the rails were hung with crimson. Between this 
wharf and Wall Street was a coffee-house, at which 
waited Governor Clinton and his military staff, with 
various other dignitaries. Militia companies, dra- 
goons, and grenadiers, in bright uniform, with their 



WASHINGTON ENTERS NEW YORK 15 

bands of music, rested in easy negligence along the side- 
walks, chatting with the multitude and waiting the 
order of attention. Shining carriages were drawn up 
next the wharf. Mounted aids clattered back and forth, 
bearing messages. 

Presently a puff of smoke came from the Galveston, 
followed by a loud report. At the same instant, with 
her yards all manned, she ran up and displayed the 
colors of all nations. Thirteen guns mouthed a re- 
sponse from the Battery. And now could be seen 
rounding the Spanish packet seven barges, manned by 
crews dressed in white, the handsomest of them pulled 
by twelve master pilots, a thirteenth serving as cox- 
swain. Upon this barge, expressly built for the occa- 
sion, all eyes turned, seeking to distinguish the stateliest 
figure among a distinguished group in the stern-sheets. 
A prolonged shout went up as the water party made 
their way to Murray's wharf. Oars were tossed and 
let fall, the chief barge was made fast at the slip, and 
up the carpeted staircase, with his escort, mounted 
a tall, elderly man, of military bearing, dressed in a 
plain suit, with blue coat and buff waistcoat and 
breeches, and looking healthy, but travel-worn. Amid 
the plaudits of the dense throng, now fully excited, 
Governor Clinton, with his suite and the civic officers, 
welcomed him at the landing-place. The artillery fired 
another salute. The bells broke out madly. Washing- 
ton (for it was he who arrived after this fashion) en- 
tered a state carriage, followed by the governor. 
Chancellor Livingston, the adjutant-general and city 
recorder, Jay, Knox, Osgood, and the Congressional 
committee, who had now disembarked, with the rest 
of the party which had been rowed over from Eliza- 
bethtown Point, took seats in other carriages provided 



1 6 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

them; as did likewise the French and Spanish ambas- 
sadors. A body-guard of grenadiers attended the Pres- 
ident-elect. The military now shouldered arms and 
took up the line of march. Citizens, arm-in-arm, 
brought up the rear. In this manner the procession 
wended its way up Wall and through Queen streets, 
to the house which the honored guest was to 
occupy. 

Thus propitiously did George Washington enter New 
York, our temporary capital, as the first President-elect 
of the United States. Receiving after the electoral 
count his official notification by the hand of the vener- 
able and trusty Charles Thomson, long secretary of 
the Continental Congress, he had started from Mount 
Vernon a week before to enter upon his new official 
trust. All the way hither he had been publicly hon- 
ored, though setting out as a plain citizen, in his pri- 
vate carriage. Through Philadelphia, under an escort 
of city troops, he rode upon a prancing white horse, a 
civic crown of laurel upon his head. A surprise, ar- 
ranged for him at Trenton by its fair townspeople, 
touched him the most deeply of all tributes. Here, at 
the bridge spanning the Assunpink River, which, 
twelve years before, he had crossed and recrossed in 
those midnight marches which turned America's for- 
tunes and his own, he found an arch, supported on 
thirteen pillars and twined with flowers, laurel, and 
evergreen. It bore the inscription, "The Defender of 
the Mothers will be the Protector of the Daughters." 
As he passed beneath it young girls, dressed in white, 
sang an ode of welcome and strewed flowers before 
him. 

Washington now remained a week in New York be- 
fore the arrangements for his inauguration were con- 



WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION 17 

eluded, meantime receiving the hospitalities of the city 
and its chief inhabitants. 

The last day of the month was fixed by April 3Q . 
Congress for the public ceremonies of the 
first Presidential induction. Though the day opened 
with clouds, the sun broke out resplendent before noon. 
Early in the morning crowds of people might be seen 
pouring into town over King's bridge, some on foot, 
others in carriages; and many, besides, had already 
arrived from the neighboring States to witness the cere- 
monies. During the forenoon prayers were offered up 
in all the churches. At twelve o'clock Washington 
proceeded, with a military escort, from his house to 
Federal Hall, whose situation was at the corner of Wall 
and Broad streets. Both houses of Congress were 
already assembled in the Senate chamber. Vice-Presi- 
dent Adams, who had entered upon his official duties 
shortly before Washington's arrival in the city, now 
received the President-elect and conducted him to a 
chair at the upper end of the hall. After a few mo- 
ments of silence, when all was ready, the assembled 
body and their invited guests went out upon the Senate 
balcony, the appointed place for the inaugural cere- 
mony. This balcony, which fronted on Broad Street, 
was most appropriate, facing, as it did, a large, open 
space, and being long and ample, with Tuscan pillars 
at intervals, and cornices decked to symbolize the thir- 
teen States. 

The scene was impressive. Below appeared a sway- 
ing crowd, whose upturned, eager faces were packed 
in solid mass. Not a window or roof in the neighbor- 
hood was unoccupied. A loud shout went up as Wash- 
ington came to the front of the balcony; cocked hats 
waved in the air, handkerchiefs fluttered. Placing his 



1 8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

hand on his heart, Washington bowed again and again, 
and then took his seat in an arm-chair, between two of 
the pillars, near a small table. His suit was a dark 
brown, of American manufacture; at his side he wore 
a dress sword; white silk stockings and shoes whose 
decoration consisted of plain silver buckles completed 
his attire. His hair, after the fashion of the day, was 
powdered and gathered in a bag behind, and his head 
remained uncovered. Though erect still in figure, with 
a face which flushed when he spoke, and of that inde- 
scribable bearing, kingly yet unkingly, which inspired 
the deepest veneration while repelling all familiarity, 
Washington showed some signs of approaching age. 
A new set of false teeth, rudely made, gave the lower 
part of his face an unusual aspect. To those who had 
long known him he seemed softening from the warrior 
into the sage. On one side of him stood Chancellor 
Livingston, his stately figure arrayed in full black; on 
the other side the square-set Adams, dressed more 
showily than Washington, but likewise in clothes of 
American fabric. Distinguished men in and out of 
Congress — among the latter Hamilton, Knox, and 
Steuben — surrounded this conspicuous group. The 
chancellor came forward and gestured to the crowd. 
All was silent. Washington arose once more, and while 
Otis, the newly chosen secretary of the Senate, held an 
open Bible upon a rich crimson cushion, Chancellor 
Livingston administered the oath of office. The words 
were solemnly repeated by Washington, who said, 
audibly, "I swear," and then, with closed eyes and in a 
whispering voice, "so help me, God !" kissing the book 
as he concluded. Chancellor Livingston now turned 
again to the crowd, and, waving his hand, exclaimed 
loudly, "Long live George Washington, President of 



WASHINGTON'S INAUGURATION 19 

the United States!" Upon this signal a long, loud 
huzza rent the air, and cheer followed cheer. It 
seemed the welling up from thousands of hearts whose 
emotions could no longer be restrained. A flag was 
run up on a staff over the building, and the artillery 
guns at the Battery thundered the earliest of Presi- 
dential salutes. 

Once more returning to the Senate-chamber, the 
balcony audience took their seats and listened to the 
inaugural address, which Washington read to the as- 
sembled Congress from his manuscript. "It was a very 
touching scene," writes a member of the House, "and 
quite of the solemn kind. His aspect, grave almost to 
sadness; his modesty, actually shaking; his voice deep, 
a little tremulous, and so low as to call for close atten- 
tion; added to the series of objects presented to the 
mind and overwhelming it, produced emotions of the 
most affecting kind upon the members." 

This address opened by an allusion (sincere, doubt- 
less, as Washington's private letters show) to the 
anxiety and diffidence he had felt and the conflict of 
his own emotions between a desire of retirement in his 
declining years on the one hand and his disposition, on 
the other, to heed the summons of Congress and the 
country. All he dared aver was his faithful study to 
collect his duty from a just appreciation of all the cir- 
cumstances which might affect it ; and all he dared hope 
was that, if grateful remembrance of the past or an 
affectionate sensibility of this transcendent proof of the 
confidence of his fellow-citizens had led him into error 
in accepting the trust, his country would not judge him 
unkindly. With this modest preface he expressed his 
wish to receive, as he had done while at the head of the 



20 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

army, a compensation which should merely defray his 
official expenses. 

The leading theme of his discourse being personal, 
Washington touched but lightly upon measures of prac- 
tical administration, deferring in this respect to the 
wisdom of Congress. But he threw out suggestions 
highly favorable to amending the constitution in re- 
sponse to the general wish, and otherwise pursuing 
such a course of popular conciliation as might knit the 
people of all the States into a harmonious union. For 
the prosperity of the new government he invoked once 
and again the favor of the Almighty Being whose wis- 
dom had thus far directed us. 

After the conclusion of this address the grave 
assemblage proceeded on foot to St. Paul's chapel, on 
Broadway, where Bishop Provoost, who had been 
elected one of the chaplains of Congress, offered 
prayers; after which Washington's escort reconducted 
him to his house. This ended the ceremonials of our 
first inauguration : an inauguration to be distinguished 
from all later ones in respect of place, the date in the 
calendar year, the decidedly religious tone given to the 
exercises, and a minor feature or two which reminded 
some of a foreign coronation. Considering the man 
and the occasion, nothing seemed out of tune with the 
popular expression. There were fireworks and illu- 
minations in the evening. 

More than once at the first session of our first Con- 
gress a clash of sentiment was perceptible between the 
two Houses as to the limits of their respective func- 
tions. But for the secrecy of the Senate debates this 
would have been plainly revealed to the country. Sen- 
ators, as representing States in their integrity and 



THE FIRST CONGRESS 21 

selected for long terms, at once arrogated superiority. 
This was indicated the very day a quorum assembled 
by the manner it invited the House to attend the elec- 
toral count, and more positive symptoms of an impe- 
rious disposition presently appeared. It was the 
House, the popular and more numerous branch, less 
resembling the old single Congress than the Senate, 
that felt the first disadvantage of such an encounter; 
but its dignity was quickly asserted, and the popular 
impulse from without soon carried it buoyantly along- 
side, in the assertion of a co-equal importance. 

The Senate, for example, proposed sending bills to 
the House by a secretary, while House bills should be 
brought up by two Representatives. But this mark of 
deference the House declined to bestow, and in the end 
each body was left to send messages by persons of its 
own choice. Again, in fixing the compensation of Con- 
gress, the Senators claimed higher pay for themselves 
than for the Representatives, because, to be frank, they 
esteemed their dignity the greater. To this point they 
adhered with such pertinacity that, sooner than suffer 
the compensation bill to fail altogether, the House per- 
mitted the insertion of a clause which promised Sena- 
tors a per diem of $7 after the 4th of March, 1795. 
The concession, however, had more shadow than sub- 
stance, for before that date the House was too strongly 
intrenched to permit that a co-ordinate branch in most 
particulars should vaunt itself as an upper House. 

The Senate, too, inclined more to ceremonials than 
the House. Upon Washington's arrival at New York, 
Congress was found disputing as to how he should be 
addressed ; which was one cause for delaying the inau- 
guration. Postponing the discussion, however, as was 
then needful, the two Houses resumed it as soon as 



22 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

the exercises were over ; the special question being how 
to frame proper replies to the inaugural address. The 
Senate proposed the title of "His Highness, the Pres- 
ident of the United States of America and Protector of 
their Liberties," but the House would have only that 
simple one of the constitution, "President of the United 
States of America." The Senate was stubborn, and 
conference produced no agreement. So the House, 
having framed a reply after its own taste, presented it 
to the President; after which checkmate the Senate 
had next to follow with an address similarly couched 
or else appear ridiculous. 



While the bills which created the new offices were 
pending before Congress, Washington matured the 
rules which should guide him in selecting persons to 
fill them. It was clear that, whatever their first mis- 
giving, most men of wide merit who had inclined to 
the anti-constitutional side were now ready to lend his 
administration their hearty support ; besides those who 
had lately borne the burden of establishing the new gov- 
ernment. With such abundant material to choose from, 
he determined to draw round him the great characters 
of the country with little regard to the contrasting 
shades of political opinion. He was not averse to 
widening the field of selection, if his administration 
would thereby gain in the affections of the people and 
the respect of mankind. Of party services as such, 
and rewards for party work, he determined to know 
nothing. Personal devotion to himself called for per- 
sonal, not public, remuneration; and indeed the com- 
pass of his personal following at this moment was 
scarcely less than unanimous America. None crowded 



APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE 23 

round to offer advice or to solicit office ; for in making 
appointments, as also in regulating his executive 
course, Washington consulted as he saw fit, and con- 
sulted wisely; usually, indeed, in the form of a letter 
so as to elicit written and thoughtful replies. Who- 
ever might be intimate in the President's household, 
Washington's tender of office came from the man him- 
self. Three qualifications he believed essential for the 
highest civil offices: integrity, capacity, and conspicu- 
ousness, the last scarcely less than the other two. Un-I / 
known characters he did not wish for exalted stations. 
"I want men," he would say, "already of marked emi- 
/ nence before the country; not only as the more likely 
to be serviceable, but because the public will more read- 
ily trust them." Sectional claims too he did not disre- 
gard ; for, to his thinking, executive administration, as 
in the legislative and judiciary departments, required 
to be largely representative in character, in order to 
pervade well the whole Union. With these cardinal 
precepts for his guidance and method, it followed that 
the office pursued the man more closely during the ad- 
ministration of our first President than as yet under 
any of his successors; far more, in fact, than would 
be possible in an age where party councils predominate 
or the people's candidate has to be worked out by 
processes less simple than the spontaneous will of the 
people themselves. Nor, perhaps, has it happened on 
the other hand that, in so great a proportion of the 
higher national appointments, men of distinction and 
diverse views have had the opportunity of declining 
an office delicately and unexpectedly tendered. 

With respect to his official advisers, Washington 
inclined at first to pursue the strict letter of the con- 
stitution, which, conceding it proper to take official 



24 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

opinions, fetters the Chief Magistrate by no board of 
executive counsellors. His habit of mind led him to 
take advice and weigh it, deciding upon his own course 
of action; and he would consult at discretion the Vice- 
President, Chief Justice Jay, or a legislative leader like 
Madison, and not the executive heads alone. Routine 
matters were referred with military precision to the 
Secretary concerned. For under the American system 
as distinguished from the British there is no gently 
coercive council known as a ministry, and each depart- 
ment is independent of the other, while none of them 
need bend to the dictation of Congress. But presently 
consulting his heads of departments and Attorney- 
General as more immediate advisers, he worked into 
the convenient practice, after the war between France 
and England commenced, of assembling them and 
making oral consultation; whence the origin of what 
we later term a cabinet and cabinet meetings. Har- 
mony of action and expedition upon affairs of great 
public moment were reasons doubtless for this latter 
step; but with the first council of four, selected from 
such diverse material, dissension and rupture resulted. 
As Jefferson used to say, he and Hamilton were pitted 
against each other like two cocks; and Randolph sid- 
ing more naturally with the one and Knox with the 
other, the President had often to choose a course of 
action which half his advisers openly disappproved. 

No precisian or martinet, Washington was punctili- 
ous in the smallest matters of etiquette. He had prece- 
dents to establish as the earliest chief executive, and 
long intercourse with mankind in exalted station had 
taught him the importance of rendering to each his due 
in official intercourse, though it were only by a bow, 
a smile, or a well-chosen word or two; and this with 



OUR FIRST PRESIDENT 25 

him was not diplomacy, but a matter of honor and 
good breeding. One so reticent by nature must other- 
wise have constantly offended those who strove to de- 
serve well. 



One must admit that the venerating applause at this 
period of "the man who united all hearts" had a modi- 
cum of foolish adulation. The tributes paid him in his 
day were quite often dictated by bad prosers and worse 
poets. A college acquaintance with Latin textbooks 
or a decent familiarity with the graces of Addison and 
Pope inspired dullards with a desire to ooze out in 
essays or odes to Columbia and Columbia's favorite 
son, which appeared in the newspapers. Allegory 
ran wild, while commonplace metaphors and tropes, 
like the fife and drum airs, graced every holiday. Upon 
its first recurrence after the inauguration, Washing- 
ton's birthday was celebrated in leading towns with 
public marks of honor ; a custom the Cincinnati of New 
York helped institute and which has never since fallen 
into disuse, though to no other American's lot has 
fallen such continuous distinction. Birthday and pro- 
cession odes became accordingly the favorite doggerel 
of the day, many of them having that smack of Tate 
and Brady which bespoke a psalm-singing age. One 
song began: 

"Arrayed in glory bright 
Columbia's saviour comes." 

Another proceeded in like strain : 

"His glory shines beyond the skies, 
From Heaven proceeds." 



26 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

With stanzas like these set to appropriate music, a 
choir would stand before the President when he ap- 
peared upon a public tour, and launch the loud paean at 
a face which relaxed nothing of its habitual expression 
of calm serenity. 

This was an age over which the royal atmosphere 
still hung, though Washington was praised as one 
whose career put kings and tyrants to the blush. Such 
ascriptions were heard as, "Long live George Washing- 
ton !" or "God bless your reign !" Religious, municipal, 
and social bodies preferred continually their addresses 
of congratulation for a gracious acknowledgment. All 
were obsequious. Indeed, the plain words with which 
the Quaker selectman of Salem welcomed the Presi- 
dent to that town contrasted very strongly with the 
other speeches made upon his Eastern tour.* Wash- 
ington's reverence for religion furthermore stimulated 
unduly the narration of apocryphal anecdotes for the 
benefit of the young. The administration press more- 
over inclined to servile flattery; and though it were 
only his "black Sam's" advertisement for provisions to 
supply the Presidential table, the disposition was irre- 
sistible to tack a moral like that of iEsop's fables upon 
everything that Washington did or indirectly sanc- 
tioned. 

Much of this extravagance Washington permitted 
from real appreciation of a sincere personal devotion, 
however awkwardly expressed, but far more because 
he could not possibly avoid it. To every breath of 

* There was much merriment in the public prints over the sim- 
ple eloquence of this Mr. Northey, though it evidently touched 
the right chord : "Friend Washington, we are glad to see thee, and 
in behalf of the inhabitants bid thee a hearty welcome to Salem." 
See Boston Centinel, November 7, 1789. 



CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON 27 

blame he was so keenly sensitive that he sought pri- 
vately to justify himself .to friends who censured these 
stately honors ; hinting at what was doubtless true, that 
he often parried the efforts of others to make them 
statelier still. But beyond this we must accept Wash- 
ington as a representative man of his times, not free 
from the prevalent notions of official dignity, nor given 
to theorizing upon the ideal government where all are 
rulers; as a man, moreover, who estimated justly his 
own historical position and the immeasurable services 
he had rendered to the Union of these States. An 
American to the core, a sincere patriot, believing in the 
future grandeur of the republic, the only reward from 
his fellow-countrymen to which he attached any per- 
sonal value whatever was their gratitude, and upon this 
he would throw himself to enjoy its buoying influence 
like a bold swimmer who dashes into the sea. Appar- 
ently the love of approbation grew upon him with 
years; but through life he was too well balanced in 
temperament to crave it inordinately and too self- 
respecting to court it. 

Those who view Washington through the refracting 
medium of his own age are apt either to exaggerate 
or belittle his character, according to their susceptible- 
ness. To a generation of image-breakers heedless of 
moral restraints, the sceptical disposition must be to 
take such a character to pieces and reconstruct from 
the fragments, if possible, a man with as little real 
reverence as one of themselves, and a hypocrite besides. 
No such reconstruction is possible here while truth re- 
mains a jewel; for Washington was as genuine a man 
as ever came from his Maker's hand. His whole life is 
an open book to his countrymen, wherein the acts and 
pursuits of his mature years are very fully recorded. 



28 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Constantly in contact with the public for twenty-five 
years, seen by natives and foreigners, the memorable 
incidents of his life during this period are preserved 
as well as his private impressions. His letters have 
been explored and even spurious ones imputed to him. 
It is strangely significant that military and political 
rivals who plotted against him unsuccessfully, those 
who fought with him and those he conquered, have left 
on record one and the same tribute to his greatness of 
soul. With possibly the exception of downright John 
Adams, whose ardent but jealous ambition was vexed 
at having to encounter for his superior the silent soldier 
he had brought forward in '75 to command the army, 
no great contemporary who survived Washington ever 
upon a final retrospect detracted from his fame. On 
the contrary, Jefferson, who had a keen eye for faults, 
and who, of all Washington's intimates, borrowed least 
from his lustre, has left one of the most graceful and 
doubtless one of the most discriminating of tributes to 
his memory ever penned. Out from these clouds of 
incense which gather now and then to obscure our 
vision emerges always the same Washington, lofty, 
symmetrical, eternal, like a mountain peak which is 
seen piercing the morning mists. 

Let us take, if we can, the proportions of this noble 
character as it stands out nakedly against a clear sky. 
We are not in the first place to ascribe to Washington 
intellectual endowments of the highest order. In 
quickness, fertility of resources, and freshness of 
thought, he was surpassed by two certainly of his first 
cabinet advisers and the Vice-President besides. Nor 
was he a scholar, a well-read man, so much as one of 
a methodical turn and observant mind, whose travel 
and personal experience with men and affairs rendered 



CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON 29 

him the best interpreter of the America of his times. 
The organizing faculty, which in him was splendidly 
developed, and thoroughly systematic habits aided a 
retentive mind of large natural powers; adding to 
which a patient, conscientious, sleepless devotion to 
whatever undertaking was in hand, and an unfailing 
patriotism, we have a man who was born to execute, 
to humble his king, to make and keep America free. 

But Washington's best mental gift was a sound and 
discriminating judgment. The balance of his mental 
and moral powers was truly superb. Neither passion 
nor interest could blind him when it came to deliber- 
ating between men or methods. He first sought the 
best advice he could gain from various sources, next he 
weighed it well, and finally, after making his choice, 
adhered consistently to both course and conclusion. 
Free, however, from that pride of origination which 
keeps so many great intellects obstinate beyond the 
conviction of error, he took his bearings anew as pru- 
dence might dictate, and with a steady hand on the 
helm watched constantly the horizon. He was thus in 
civil affairs a splendid practical administrator, though 
necessarily conservative, and a thorn to party leaders; 
not infallible, yet never far astray as concerned present 
action. As a military leader there was danger that one 
so deliberative might on some unexpected turn be dis- 
concerted by the foe and outgeneralled, and so it had 
happened more than once; but for a protracted cam- 
paign he stood well the test, and where he advanced 
and had prepared the surprise he came out conqueror. 

Washington's moral and religious traits of character 
have been constantly eulogized. That he was a true 
Christian cannot be doubted, but what most strikingly 
impresses is that he was a Christian who lived by rule 



3 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

rather than impulse. The practice was by no means 
uncommon for persons in his day to frame a series of 
maxims which should regulate their daily behavior, 
and secrete them in some private place ; but those which 
Washington is known to have prepared for himself, 
or at least made use of, were neither obtrusively pious 
on the one hand, nor on the other framed after that 
common Chesterfield pattern which would catalogue 
smirks and bows among the virtues; they were sober, 
temperate, just, and manly. That same reflective dis- 
position which Washington displayed in public affairs 
pervaded his whole inner life. His self-examination 
in lonely hours must have been scrutinizing and se- 
vere. 

Washington most probably had personal ambition. 
His career indicates this, and particularly the wealthy 
marriage which greatly promoted his advancement. 
But his ambition was always of that elevated kind 
which makes one the willing instrument for accom- 
plishing beneficent ends. And here the rare temperance 
of Washington, the just equilibrium to maintain 
which was a life-long duty, stood him in good stead, 
for he remained a steadfast patriot when tempted to 
make himself a monarch. Never violent or vindictive 
in action, he stands that rarest of the world's military 
heroes — lord of himself. Yet Washington was not 
free from the common infirmities, but on the contrary 
a man of naturally fierce passions; and there were 
moments of provocation, even in this tranquil autumn 
of his life, when he would give way to a violent out- 
burst of language such as made listeners cower and 
tremble. But his wrath was soon spent; he quickly 
recovered himself; and when it came to the decision 
justice inflexible had regained her seat. 



CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON 31 

It may well excite surprise that one in outer life so 
unemotional, so reserved of manner, so cold almost to 
haughtiness, should in a republic have inspired so 
much popular enthusiasm as unquestionably did this 
man. Americans of our times catch his radiance like 
that of some incandescent light which shines without 
emitting heat ; but the Americans of a century ago were 
perhaps more susceptible to heroic impressions, and 
regarded birth and high-breeding differently. And in 
every age of a republic, military courage calls forth the 
common admiration, and so, too, does sincerity of 
purpose. Two courses lie open to popular preferment : 
one by exhibiting captivating manners and a desire to 
conciliate every one; the other by performing well the 
task that lies nearest home and leaving the multitude 
to gain a better acquaintance. The former is preferred 
by small men who seek official lustre from small occa- 
sions, but the few truly great and well-deserving who 
have gained distinction when great occasion has dis- 
covered and tested them, sink deepest in the popular 
heart after they once enter; they are the stronger for 
their self-poise, and praised for that which places them 
in contrast with other men and stands opposed to 
the contemptible. Washington, if not cordial, lively, 
or sociable, was at all events courteous, considerate, 
and just in his dealings. That desolation of greatness, 
which so distinguishes him above other Americans, for- 
bade favoritism, so that those under him became emu- 
lous of promotion by merit. 

Socially speaking, it can hardly be said that Wash- 
ington had a private life. He cherished no bosom 
friends, though interesting himself in young people; 
and among leading men of his day those who won his 
heart the closest were Hamilton and the impulsive 



32 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Lafayette. Yet he had no convivial Bentinck like Wil- 
liam of Orange, whom in many points he resembled; 
and probably no person living partook freely of his 
confidence. He married when past the season of impet- 
uous youth; he had no child of his own, but to the 
offspring of his wife by her former marriage he was 
like an own parent, though in domestic life he was con- 
stant rather than demonstrative. Close as were his offi- 
cial relations with other public men, he repelled famil- 
iarity ; and when one by no means unconspicuous * 
came up and saluted him in a jocular manner with a 
slap on the shoulder, Washington turned upon him 
with a look that withered him into silence. But care- 
fully as he exacted the respect which he felt others 
owed him, he was equally scrupulous in rendering to 
each his due in return. The just balance was the prin- 
ciple he applied to all actions, public or private, high 
or low, to hospitality, to deeds of charity, and to the 
economies alike of a nation or his own household. 

It appears certain that Washington had neither wit 
nor a salient humor. He conversed sensibly and well 
with the guest at table, but a witty sally disturbed him, 
and to anything like the thrust of ridicule he was 
keenly sensitive. No bon mot is known to have escaped 
his lips. Young ladies pleased him with their vivacity, 
and in one or two burlesque scenes on his plantation, 
which cannot be funnily described, he astonished the 
household by breaking out into a long and hearty 
laugh. Otherwise his face, unless he was angry, wore 
that calm and placid expression of repose with which 
his pictures make us so familiar. And yet a dry, almost 

* G. Morris. See Van Buren's Political Parties, p. 106, where 
this is narrated as an incident of the Philadelphia Convention 
of 1787. 



CHARACTER OF WASHINGTON 33 

sardonic sense of humor peeps out of his correspond- 
ence in by-places, of a quality still better illustrated 
perhaps by the authenticated instance where he turned 
sharply upon a little boy who was running after him 
from his tailor's admiringly through a retired street 
of Philadelphia, and taking off his hat made him a pro- 
found salutation.* For unless the ludicrous aspect of 
the curiosity he everywhere excited sometimes amused 
the great man he cannot have been human. 

Washington's peculiar temperament and habits are 
largely explained by reference to his training and per- 
sonal experience. Born of a good Virginian family, 
he was left fatherless at an early age, with the cares 
of a large household, only moderately provided , for, 
devolving much upon him as the most trusted son of 
a widowed mother. His education was received at 
home under her refining influence. By profession a 
surveyor, before reaching majority his duties took him 
into unsettled regions on long expeditions, remote from 
congenial society; then serving under Braddock, his 
military experience began among the frontier Indians. 
An early love disappointment saddened a heart whose 
hidden depths must have been stirred profoundly. Be- 
coming an independent and wealthy planter, rising to 
social eminence, the Revolution called him forth to take 
the lead of the American armies, in which post he con- 
tinued through his prime, issuing orders and maturing 
plans which required long deliberation and the utmost 
secrecy. And thus had a shy, meditative, proud- 
spirited youth grown into a serious, reticent, well-bal- 
anced man, whose chief relaxation consisted in being 
publicly entertained and publicly entertaining. 

Long use of the pen and contact with the best think- 
* See Isaac T. Hopper's Recollections. 



34 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ers in America trained Washington into a ready writer, 
capable of expressing himself in a clear, terse, and 
impressive style, imperfect as had been his education. 
But he had no pride of authorship, and with the inces- 
sant official demands made upon him for civil and mili- 
tary papers, he had long since fallen into the course of 
permitting others to draft documents for his signature. 
Yet in the component of those voluminous writings 
which pass current as his own, whatever pure gold 
others may have supplied, the test and the stamp of the 
coinage is his. 

Of Washington's physical courage there can be no 
shadow of a doubt ; he gave orders calmly while bullets 
whizzed about him; he was every inch a soldier. But 
his moral courage is not to be appreciated without con- 
sidering that he protected his military honor in an age 
of duels without ever sending or provoking a challenge. 
An open enemy quailed before his eye and the cold, 
rebuking dignity into which he froze when offended, 
while treacherous friends were most often disarmed by 
his genuine magnanimity. 

On the whole it is the predominance of the moral 
over the mental and physical qualities, or rather their 
admirable union, that most impresses us. For strat- 
egic skill, consummate policy, profoundness of views, 
or even originality, Washington is not pre-eminent 
among the world's heroes, although, as one has well 
remarked, so far as he could see, he saw more clearly 
than any other man of his times. But as the man of 
safe action, as the fittest creation of a revolutionary 
age, as the embodiment of whatever was grandest in 
a grand cause, as the filial iEneas who bore America 
on his shoulders from darkness to light, his name is 
imperishable. 



FRANKLIN AND ABOLITION 35 

Early in February, 1789, memorials were presented 
in the House of Representatives favoring emancipa- 
tion : first from the Quakers of the Middle States ; next 
from the Abolition Society of Pennsylvania, Frank- 
lin's name heading the latter. "Equal liberty," claimed 
the abolition petition, "was originally the portion and 
is still the birthright of all men." And its prayer to 
Congress was, "That you will promote mercy and jus- 
tice towards this distressed race ; and that you will step 
to the very verge of the power vested in you for dis- 
couraging every species of traffic in the persons of our 
fellow-men." 

Franklin died a few weeks after Congress had dis- 
posed of the memorial which bore his illus- I790 
trious signature, and in two continents were April I? - 
bestowed upon a private citizen and man of the peo- 
ple funeral honors which kings might have envied. In 
this last public act of his life, the only one in fact which 
associates his name closely with America's new epoch, 
the veteran patriot, whom some House debaters sup- 
posed to be in his dotage, proved himself as clear- 
sighted as ever, — a statesman, sagacious and philan- 
thropic in advance of his times. 



As to official intercourse between Congress and the 
Executive, the course first fixed upon was not regularly 
continued afterwards. Washington delivered his an- 
nual messages orally in the presence of the two Houses, 
as did his immediate successor, formal responses fol- 
lowing after the manner already alluded to. With that 
over-eagerness to magnify their special importance by 
establishing close and mysterious relations with the 
Chief Magistrate, which Senators were seen to have 



36 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

displayed at the first assembling of Congress, a minor- 
ity of that body attempted to procure the President's 
personal attendance for making his nominations, which 
was to be followed by a ballot taken in his presence. 
But this was not approved by the general voice of the 
Senate; and Washington himself, who, at the first ses- 
sion, would sometimes consult the Senate in person, 
and more frequently sent the head of a department to 
make explanation of official matters requiring the 
action of that branch, utterly discontinued the practice 
upon reflection, substituting the rule that all executive 
communications to either house, except the opening 
message, should be in writing. This latter course bet- 
ter preserved the dignity and independence of the 
Executive; for, whatever the public advantage in 
requiring ministers of state to attend open deliberations 
of the legislature and make such exposition of the 
administration plans as to fix the public attention and 
induce suitable action, there can be none whatever in 
their secret affiliation with a branch which sits with 
closed doors and can but partially accomplish the execu- 
tive wishes. The confirmation of all treaties and 
appointments vested, however, in the senatorial dis- 
cretion, and, notwithstanding executive communica- 
tions were now made in writing, the President would 
still ask the advice and consent of the Senate in form- 
ing an Indian treaty. 



The political opponents of the Hamilton Federalists 

had now begun to assume the regular style 

of "Republicans." To Federalists, however, 

who prided themselves upon their old party name, it 

seemed rather a Southern faction, "outs," who were 



NEW PARTY MOVEMENTS 37 

jealous of the "ins," the old dregs and faeces of Anti- 
Federalism once more in ferment. On their own part, 
the present fealty of Federalist leaders was not so much 
to the constitution, in which all classes of citizens now 
fairly acquiesced, as to the broad construction of con- 
stitutional powers, and to the funding, the bank, and 
other great features of the Hamilton system of finance. 
Hamilton himself originated the ideas which they sup- 
ported. Voters will cling long to party names and 
traditions and to party favorites, under any circum- 
stances; and, with Washington at the head, patriots, 
irrespective of party, were well satisfied. The common 
people had not as yet learned to use their strength ; 
and Ames put the patrician idea modestly enough when 
he asserted that "the men of sense and property, even 
a little above the multitude, wish to keep the govern- 
ment in force enough to govern." As against Virginia 
and North Carolina, the States where these opposition 
elements were becoming most active, and whose legis- 
latures had recently led off in attempting, among other 
popular measures, to force open the doors of the United 
States Senate, the Federal leaders, strongly dominant 
in New England, hoped to win by keeping New York 
and the Middle States in alliance on their own side. 

While conservatives, aristocrats, the commercial 
class, the timorous, and the friends of a powerful cen- 
tral rule thus gravitated towards Hamilton as their 
natural leader and exponent, the liberty-loving, those 
jealous of class supremacy and court manners, they 
who detested money-changers and the new methods of 
growing rich, together with the floating remnants of 
the Anti-Federal and State rights party, were irresist- 
ibly attracted towards Jefferson, whose superior talents 
and social eminence made his devotion to their cause 



38 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

appear all the more captivating. Probably no two men 
holding subordinate station under an American Pres- 
ident can ever again so strongly influence powerful 
parties by their personal example as did Hamilton and 
Jefferson in this and the succeeding years. Nor was 
their present influence owing so much to their rival 
ambitions as to the genuine devotedness of each to the 
politics and political methods he professed. 



CHAPTER III. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF GEORGE WASHINGTON. 

§ I. Period of Third Congress. March 4, 1793-March 3, I795-— 
§ II. Period of Fourth Congress. March 4, 1795-March 3, 
1797. 

A HANDBOOK, prepared in 1793 at the Treas- 
ury Department, gives a succinct view of the 
condition of the United States at that date, 
and sets forth the prospective advantages afforded to 
families seeking a new home in America. By Thomas 
Cooper, too, an Englishman of liberal tendencies, the 
same flattering picture of American life is also presented 
as the result of his own personal tour of inspection. A 
land of liberty was here pictured, where public credit 
stood firmly, where the taxes were light, and where a 
happy mediocrity of fortune prevailed, instead of those 
depressing contrasts of wealth and poverty with which 
Europe was sadly familiar. 

Land and landed products were the great source of 
our national wealth, as thus exhibited. Yet here was a 
considerable commerce, in addition, encouraged by 
drawbacks and the absence of all export duties. Man- 
ufactures had been steadily growing since 1789. 
These consisted still of articles of necessity rather 
than the products of elegance and refinement. 

But, most of all, the United States was a nation of 
farmers and planters, gaining a livelihood from the soil ; 
and, with land cheap, the cost of labor high, and room 
for all, the European welcomed the prospect of gain- 



4 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ing an honest livelihood in a country where all were 
equals, and a man could marry and rear a family with- 
out the depressing thought that for each new mouth to 
be fed his scanty crust must be broken into smaller 
fragments. To the down-trodden of the Old World 
such a prospect was most inspiriting, and the hope, too, 
of owning the fee of his own farm, instead of having 
to rent the land from a peer or a peer's tenant, and so 
devote the chief fruits of the earth to pampering others 
in idleness. 

To the foreigner seeking to become a farmer and 
freeman in the New World, the Middle section of the 
United States offered at this time the greatest induce- 
ments. New England appeared a sterile region, and 
the soil was here so parcelled out among a large and 
thrifty people that the price of lands was high; her 
own sons had begun to roam westward for these very 
reasons. From the Southern States one was kept 
because of a climate unfavorable to toil and still more 
unfavorable institutions. The far West, as yet, was 
for those only who were willing to endure the greatest 
hardship and social privations; and such had become 
the dread of Indian massacre since our late military 
disasters that the pioneer slept with his loaded rifle by 
his side, and started at the screech-owl's call as though 
he heard the yell of approaching savages. To Central 
New York one might turn with favor, in whose happy 
valleys the strange mixture of white and red inhabi- 
tants was symbolized by a corresponding fusion of 
geographical names — where the modern Rome and 
Utica, Syracuse and happy Palmyra were gradually 
becoming founded along the Mohawk and in the 
Oneida and Ontario country. Hither had the New 
England emigrants resorted in large numbers of late. 



THE PIONEER FARMER 41 

But rapidly as New York grew, Pennsylvania seemed, 
to the emigrant farmer, the garden State of America. 
Of peasant emigration to the United States the greater 
part was drained at this time from Ireland and Ger- 
many. And it was quite customary at this period for 
such of the humbler emigrants, Germans more par- 
ticularly, as could not pay their passage, to make agree- 
ment with the captain for selling their services for a 
suitable term to such Americans as might be willing 
to give them employment on their arrival and advance 
the cost of transportation. These "redemptioners," as 
they were called, performed much menial service in 
Philadelphia, and it frequently happened that the 
expense of needful clothing and supplies, furnished by 
the employer, would cause the term of one's contract 
bondage to be considerably prolonged. 

Once free to choose his own plans of life, and blessed 
with spare cash, the foreign emigrant, like the native 
pioneer who sought to become an independent tiller 
of the soil, looked about for a suitable spot to cultivate. 
The land capitalists and their agents approached him, 
of course, with offers of sale, more or less tempting, 
as to the tracts they wished to get rid of. Nor by 1797 
was it certain that a capable and industrious farmer 
might not get thousands of acres in the back country 
at a nominal cost, provided he would settle and draw 
a colony about him; for that was the time when the 
load of wild lands was a millstone upon many a specu- 
lator's shoulders, and Morris, whose indorsement had 
once sustained the sinking credit of the Union, got 
lodged in a debtor's prison. A discreet settler took 
care that his soil was fertile and the land sufficiently 
near to a good market ; if there was a continuous water 
connection with some prosperous port, all the better. 



42 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Hickory and walnut were the signs of rich land; that 
which bore firs he avoided, if possible, as barren and 
unproductive. Farms' in the new country rarely 
exceeded three hundred acres; one hundred and fifty 
was a very fair average. 

After buying his land and taking possession in the 
spring of the year, the farmer would cut down a few 
trees to build him and his family a temporary home. 
His neighbors, if there were any for miles about, good- 
naturedly lent their assistance, and in three or four days 
a building of unhewn logs rose ready for habitation. 
Roughly put together, the interstices stopped with rails, 
calked with straw or moss and daubed with mud, and 
the roof covered with nothing better than thin staves 
split out of oak or ash and fastened on by heavy 
poles, such a dwelling was a "log cabin;" but a house 
of a belter sort, especially if made of hewn logs, having 
the crannies neatly stopped with stones and plaster, 
and a shingled roof, would be styled a "log house." 
An American log house, with glass windows and a 
chimney, was quite as comfortable as the better cot- 
tages of English farmers ; and on its stoop, some bright 
afternoon, might be seen a healthy woman awaiting 
her husband's return, and dressed to please him, who 
dandled a babe in her arms, while handsome boys and 
girls played before her or clung timidly to her calico 
gown. Log cabins, too, were often the abode of a 
modest refinement, though commonly made far from 
convenient, for they were usually without windows 
and had only a hole at the top for the smoke to escape 
through. 

An American forest stood grand in the mass, the tall 
trees interlocking their branches, with many a pictu- 



THE PIONEER FARMER 43 

resque scene at the clearings. But, as compared with 
English woods, their trunks did not seem thick and 
mossy, nor their foliage so dense and rich. This made 
the backwoodsman's work the lighter, however, and 
the ring of his axe was the bugle of civilization's 
advancing host. Grubbing the land he meant to cul- 
tivate, by removing all the small trees and under- 
growth, of which he made bonfires on the spot, he next 
proceeded to cut down as many trees of the larger sort 
nearest his building as seemed suitable, girdling others, 
without delay, so as to destroy the vegetation of the 
branches, and let in the light and air to his next sea- 
son's crop. 

Turning his new soil in May with a ploughshare or 
harrow, the settler dropped Indian corn into the earth, 
and was gladdened by a large harvest in October. A 
wholesome store of cornmeal and hominy was thus laid 
by for the family consumption, with abundant prov- 
ender besides for cattle and poultry. His sheep and 
hogs, if he had any, ranged the forest for their food. 

Once a freeholder the pioneer stood firmly, granting 
industrious habits and a stock of good health. For a 
few years, indeed, it was a lonely and rough life, with 
little social comfort or relaxation beyond what the 
secluded family might find in one another. The father 
and his oldest sons must roam the woods, with dog 
and gun, to shoot deer, raccoons, and squirrels for fresh 
meat, whose skins they bartered with the nearest store 
or trading-house in order to procure clothing, tea, and 
sugar for the household ; or, on a cloudy afternoon, they 
dropped hook and line in the lake or along the nearest 
stream to secure the next morning's breakfast. But 
as years go on the land becomes cleared, a few more 



44 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

acres each season. One begins raising wheat, tobacco, 
or other crops, which should yield him a pecuniary 
return ; the kitchen garden and orchards are seen ; the 
increase of his live stock adds to his wealth and com- 
fort, and, still more, the growth of a blooming family 
of sons and daughters, for whose future he feels no 
anxiety. Neighbors approach more closely. A saw- 
mill and competent builders appear, and at length he 
moves from the log house into his more pretentious and 
permanent dwelling of boards. Perhaps the township 
grows so rapidly that, ere he has passed his prime, he 
becomes a trader, a social leader, a patriarch, or, haply, 
a politician. His girls grow up like wild roses. His 
boys, with the usual allowances for black sheep, elbow 
their way through the world ; and upon some yet uncul- 
tivated portion of his tract he may fence off the married 
son, whose taste is not for roaming, and tell the young 
couple they must coax their fortune from mother 
nature as he has done. 

If, however, the pioneer fail of success (and ill-suc- 
cess in life, wherever and whatever the pursuit, is often 
traceable to family traits, such as despondency, impa- 
tience, or too romantic a disposition), he soon quits 
the spot first purchased and is off with his family for 
other acres seven or eight hundred miles away, there 
to try his fortunes anew, with the odds more against 
him at each change. If idle or dissipated in habits, he 
degenerates into a demi-savage; his scanty clearing ill 
supports the wife and children huddled into the chinky 
hut, and they must sow and reap for themselves or 
perish, while he wanders the forest for days, with no 
company but his hound, his rifle, and the fatal flask. 
Society grows hateful and burdensome to him, and his 
earthly curse is still to wander and to wander, leaping 



PHILADELPHIA AS THE CAPITAL 45 

before each advancing wave of population which 
washes inward from the Atlantic coast. 



Philadelphia, which, as the first city in historic 
renown, the first in population, and the temporary 
national abode, wore the triple crown of the United 
States, fulfilled her mission with a Quaker-like simplic- 
ity and quiet which somewhat diminished the example 
she was setting. Philanthropic and learned societies 
here existed, commerce flourished, colleges and hospi- 
tals stood on old endowments, and yet an atmosphere 
of serenity, not to say of dulness, enveloped the public 
work of the place. A want of homogeneousness in the 
population, and religious differences dating back to 
Colonial days, made an obstacle here, as in the rest of 
the State, to united enterprise and the development of 
a distinctive political character. Philadelphians had 
no such typical traits or typical leaders as Boston or 
Charleston ; there were sets and cliques all living apart, 
and the social striatures here yawned the wider, be- 
cause, as a municipality, it was broken into fragments. 
The city had few pretentious edifices at this time, and 
those were private ones; and of the grandest of these 
the owner melted his fortune as he constructed it. 

Philadelphia was, in short, quite typical of its dwell- 
ers, a city of plain, sober, substantial homes, whose 
wealthy merchants, out of good brick, with white mar- 
ble facings and foundations, made themselves dwell- 
ings, with ample dormers and doorways, easy stair- 
cases, and open chimneys, comfortable, but severely 
chaste. On warm summer evenings their living con- 
tents, like a Front Street merchant's bales and boxes, 
would pour out, upon the clean steps, porches, and side- 



46 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

walks, but wooden shutters at most other times ex- 
cluded the public gaze as from the riches of a safe-vault. 
The gregarious desire was usually kept within decorous 
bounds, and, as scarcely a mechanic could live con- 
tented here without being a freeholder, the poor man's 
desire was often gratified by the purchase of a vacant 
lot in some new street, where he might put up a small 
building fifty feet back from the surveyor's line, there 
to live until his means should enable him to join a good 
house to the front and turn his first habitation into a 
kitchen ell. The streets had no curbstones as yet, but 
pavements were dotted by posts to mark the boundaries. 
Though a Schuylkill aqueduct was lately projected, 
pumps supplied water for drinking, and rain-casks 
whatever might be needful for washing the clothes. 
Spring Garden was a favorite place for flying kites; 
State House Square, with its beautiful elms, the fash- 
ionable promenade. The old jail and whipping-post 
exchanged knowing glances at the corner of Third and 
High streets. Philadelphia's system of streets, run- 
ning at right angles, made the city a safe one to find 
one's way in. Trees were set out at regular intervals, 
and the nightly chorus of toads and bullfrogs, broken, 
possibly, by the plaintive note of a whip-poor-will, 
reminded every Londoner that he was far from home. 
For miles from the city, on the Pennsylvania side, there 
was an open prospect, since the king's troops, at the 
period of occupation, had, when distressed for fuel, cut 
down many hundred acres of orchards; but the oppo- 
site shore of New Jersey was a forest. 

At this period epidemic disorders were prevalent in 
northern sea-coast towns to an extent unknown in the 
nineteenth century under our modern system of sani- 
tary precautions and the advance of medical science. 



YELLOW FEVER 47 

Small-pox broke out in Boston with such virulence in 
the latter part of 1792 that a town meeting was called 
to devise measures for checking the contagion, and 
Governor Hancock thought it prudent to convene the 
next legislature at Concord. A scourge far more ter- 
rible and less skilfully resisted afflicted Philadelphia 
a year later ; a strange and fatal disease, proving to be 
the yellow fever, which was probably brought over in 
early summer by some uninspected vessel from the 
West Indies. At a lodging-house on Water Street, in 
July, the first victims were attacked, and from this 
quarter of the city the contagion spread regularly along, 
checked by an occasional empty block of houses, until 
in the latter part of August the whole population was 
in a panic. Mayor Clarkson, on the 226. of August, 
ordered the streets cleaned and filth removed, and by 
the 26th an address of the Philadelphia physicians was 
published, warning the citizens against the danger of 
holding intercourse with infected persons. The toll- 
ing of bells at funerals was stopped, and all were 
advised to avoid fatigue, dress warmly, and preserve 
habits of temperance. But medical men understood 
little how to cope with this terrible disorder. Stopping 
the practice of kindling bonfires, which some had 
hitherto thought a good preventive of the disease, they 
substituted that of firing guns for clearing the air; 
under the delusion apparently that the smell of gun- 
powder was beneficial, but without sufficiently reflect- 
ing that this jarring of people's nerves prostrated them 
the more readily. So, too, it was only after fatal 
experiments with salt purges, bark, wine, and lauda- 
num, that Dr. Rush found, as he declared, in calomel 
and jalap a happy remedy; and thereupon so instant 
became the demand for these new specifics, that many 



4 8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

fell victims to doses of the dangerous components not 
properly apportioned. Vinegar and camphor, and 
pieces of tarred rope were widely used and recom- 
mended by way of preventives. 

The usual course of the disease was this : Chilly fits 
first warned one of his danger, next a hot skin ; he felt 
pains all over the back, and became costive; he had 
soreness at the stomach, accompanied by violent retch- 
ings without any discharge. If these symptoms slowly 
abated he recovered, but if they suddenly ceased it 
was a sign of danger. In the latter event the whites of 
the eyes would become saffron-colored, blood issued 
from the mouth and nose, and vomiting ensued of a 
dark substance resembling coffee-grounds. The vic- 
tim's skin now assumed in spots that yellowish-purple 
from which the name of the fever was derived. He 
felt sleepy, and would lie down wherever he happened 
to be; delirium seized him soon after, and sometimes 
within a few hours after the first attack, though more 
commonly in the course of from five to eight days, he 
died. Even where he recovered from the black vomit 
spell there was danger that a fatal haemorrhage would 
set in. The disease was most successfully combated 
by breaking up the first costiveness. One in good 
health would catch the infection from the breath or the 
touch of a tainted person ; and even a trunk of clothing 
was known to communicate the disorder. 

About August 25 the inhabitants began to flee as 
from death on the pale horse. Coaches, carriages, and 
drays, in long processions, bore human beings, with 
their baggage and household goods, to a prudent dis- 
tance from the city of pestilence. Those who remained 
in Philadelphia shut themselves up in their houses, ven- 



YELLOW FEVER 49 

turing out as little as possible, and friends passed one 
another with only a cold look of recognition ; easy con- 
versation at the street corner was suspended, for each 
distrusted his neighbor. While the epidemic lasted 
17,000 left town. An approaching hearse was the sig- 
nal for closing every door and window, and all who 
wore the habiliments of mourning, even heart-broken 
orphans and widows, were shunned as though branded 
murderers. The suffering was intensified among the 
poor and bereaved by reason of the utter stagnation of 
business, whereby thousands were thrown out of em- 
ployment. Meantime the undertaker, the busiest of 
men, with his energies taxed to the utmost, did most of 
the doleful business of interment by night, and, con- 
tracting to furnish coffins by the quantity in his whole- 
sale procedure, that which he designed for one member 
of a family would serve not unfrequently for another, 
while the intended occupant recovered. The remains 
of respected citizens, in this period of gloom, no matter 
what the cause of death, were hurried to the grave on 
a pair of shafts, drawn by a single horse, with some 
solitary negro for the driver ; they were buried without 
funeral rites, not a member of the family nor a family 
friend being present to drop a last tear at the grave. 
It was not strange if amid all this confusion mistakes 
occurred, or that a sick man was sometimes boxed up 
before the breath had left his body. The public offices 
were temporarily removed from the mourning city. 
The General Assembly of Pennsylvania met at the 
State House in the midst of the panic, and then hastily 
adjourned. Officials, even the municipal ones whose 
duty it was to provide for averting this contagion, 
slipped away under various pretexts, shifting upon 



50 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

those who remained a tremendous burden, without 
means adequate for sustaining it. The almshouse hav- 
ing been closed upon infected occupants, a vacant circus 
on Market Street was taken by the authorities, where 
victims died of sheer exposure to the damp air, and 
one corpse actually putrefied before a servant, — and 
she a female, who fortunately suffered nothing in 
consequence, — could be found hardy enough to remove 
it ; the neighbors meantime threatening to set the build- 
ing on fire unless the hospital quarters were removed 
speedily to a more distant site. 

While the fear of approaching death laid bare the 
selfishness and meanness of the many, it showed that 
there were brave citizens who dared to expose their 
own lives in order to assuage the general suffering. 
One of these was Mayor Clarkson, whose conduct 
adorns with cisatlantic lustre a name which philan- 
thropy must ever claim for her own ; another, Stephen 
Girard, Philadelphia's renowned benefactor of later 
years, who, with Peter Helm, assumed in September 
the direction of the new Lazaretto Hospital at Bush 
Hill, an institution which, filthily kept and poorly 
served, had previously acquired the repute of a human 
slaughter-house. Meetings of patriotic citizens, pre- 
sided over by the mayor, provided temporary funds, 
and moneyed men seconded the efforts made by their 
more prominent brethren for organizing resistance to 
the dread destroyer. 

Nature proved the only skilful physician for her own 
distemper in this case. With the first frosts of early 
November the yellow fever ceased, and the city once 
more became inhabited and habitable. During the sea- 
son of the epidemic, from August to November 9, the 
number of city interments was 4,044, and it is esti- 



FRANCE AND ENGLAND 51 

mated that out of the entire population which inhab- 
ited Philadelphia while the fever prevailed, more than 
20 per cent, perished. 



From the time of Washington's second inaugura- 
tion, or, perhaps, from the opening of the same cal- 
endar year, dates the development of a new impulse to 
political divisions in America. The party cleavage was 
essentially as before, but, instead of Hamilton's finan- 
cial policy, the predominant issue now became, through 
the influence of gathering events, that predilection 
already strong as between the two great contending 
powers of Europe, Great Britain and France, which 
was before subordinated. Those countries, grappling 
as in a death-struggle, sought to embroil the United 
States, each on her own side, by exerting a direct influ- 
ence upon the policy which our American people claimed 
so nearly as their own constitutional right to control. 
Nor can it be said with truth that a genuine neutrality, 
with reference to European politics, prevailed in this 
country from 1793 until after the war of 181 2, a war 
which accomplished the final divorcement of the two 
continents. 

Before the recall of Genet had been determined 
upon, Washington held in his hands the proffered 
resignations of his two chief secretaries. His peace of 
mind, and the harmony of the administration councils, 
required that one or both should be promptly accepted. 
Jefferson had proposed resigning in September, but the 
President induced him to remain until the end of the 
year, when Congress would be assembled. It was 
Hamilton's wish, however, that his own retirement 
should take effect not sooner than the close of the com- 



52 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ing session; his department plans were to be brought 
forward in Congress, and he wished an opportunity 
for resuming that investigation into his official conduct 
which neither he nor the President thought concluded. 



No rational interpretation of our new treaty with 
1795 Great Britain can leave a doubt in candid 
june-juiy. m i nc i s fa^t this government, having plain 
grievances against King George, yielded all the favors 
in her power to bestow for the sake of getting these 
grievances redressed for the first time, and only just 
far enough to obviate the necessity of immediate war. 
Jay, the representative of the aggrieved country, 
though honorable and patriotic, had always been a 
timid negotiator on America's behalf, and on this mis- 
sion he was so painfully conscious that a dangerous 
contest of arms would follow his failure to make terms 
with the aggressor, that he most likely encouraged 
the less scrupulous statesman who treated with him, to 
turn the opportunity to England's best account, by 
obtaining all the commercial advantages for the Euro- 
pean struggle she wished for without undergoing the 
humiliation of asking for them ; and paring the claws 
of a neutral who had angrily threatened to use them, 
while persuading America that the British lion was 
submitting to that operation. While it is probable that 
Jay could not have gained more for his country, it is 
certain he might have surrendered less, and so given an 
equally pacific exit to his mission. 

The secret of the Jay treaty had been profoundly 
kept by all admitted into it, even beyond the adjourn- 
ment of the Senate. But outside curiosity was intense ; 
nor can it be thought strange, so strong was the sense 



THE JAY TREATY 53 

of injustice on our part, if a too sanguine public expec- 
tation framed an imaginary treaty, which yielded all 
the commercial rights America had asked for, and made 
ample reparation for every injury. Washington, im- 
pressed with the importance of preventing a war, which 
the rejection of these negotiations rendered likely, had 
intended to ratify the treaty apparently, should the 
Senate so advise, but he was now embarrassed by its 
reservation of the West India clause, which raised 
some technical questions concerning the constitutional 
"advice and consent" required of that body. And a 
second perplexity had arisen, far more serious; for 
during the Senate session came intelligence from abroad 
that, profiting by the present scarcity of provisions in 
France, whither nearly all our last year's grain harvest 
was destined, the British ministry had renewed their 
former offensive order for seizing provision vessels, so 
that immediate ratification on his part might be inter- 
preted into a virtual surrender of the American view 
held, not without strong support from international 
jurists, on a delicate issue which the treaty itself had 
not assumed to decide. Incorrect and imperfect ver- 
sions of the English negotiation had recently appeared 
in our newspapers, and just as Washington was on the 
point of allowing to the public an inspection of the 
authentic document, Bache's paper came out with a true 
copy of the treaty in full. 

The news swept the country like wildfire. Repub- 
lished in all the other leading newspapers of the Union, 
the treaty made a profound popular impression, and 
that mostly of disappointment and disfavor. A town 
meeting in Boston, in July, which some of the most 
eminent merchants of the place attended, denounced 
the treaty as unworthy of ratification, and agreed to 



54 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

memorialize the President to that effect. In New York 
a mass gathering was next called for a similar purpose, 
which Hamilton and his friends tried unwisely to cap- 
ture in the Anglican interest. Hamilton was stoned 
while speaking in aid of the treaty, and after his sym- 
pathizers had been compelled to withdraw, resolutions 
of opposition, under the lead of the Livingston family, 
were unanimously passed. Public meetings followed 
at Philadelphia and Charleston with the like object of 
remonstrance, McKean, Muhlenberg, and Dallas tak- 
ing a prominent part in the former, and John Rutledge 
and Gadsden in the latter. Most of these demonstra- 
tions had riotous accompaniments, such as burning the 
treaty before the British minister's house, trailing the 
British flag, and destroying Jay in effigy. 

Amid the general execration, Jay suffered the popu- 
lar penalty, usual with American statesmen on such 
occasions, of having his motives foully traduced. At 
Philadelphia a transparency was borne in procession, 
with a figure of the Chief Justice in his long robe ; his 
right hand held a balance, one scale of which, inscribed 
"American liberty and independence" kicked the beam, 
while "British gold" bore down the other. His left 
hand extended the treaty scroll towards a group of 
Senators. From his mouth proceeded the words, 
"Come up to my price, and I will sell you my country." 
This effigy was burned at Kensington. 



While the fate of this nation to so many hung appar- 

I7g6 ently by the same thread with the treaty, 

April. Fisher Ames rose to his feet to deliver the 

most eloquent speech ever heard in Congress by his 

generation. Failing health had kept one of the most 



SPEECH OF AMES 55 

experienced debaters of the House from mingling 
hitherto in the discussion ; a misfortune which was felt 
all the more keenly as Tracy, who had been put for- 
ward to respond to the calm and reassuring speech of 
Gallatin, showed too much asperity to make a strong 
counter-impression, and marred the effect of his argu- 
ment by ill-natured flings at Gallatin's foreign nativity. 
Ames, against his physician's advice, determined to 
speak, and the galleries filled to hear him. He arose 
pale and feeble, hardly able to stand, but soon warmed 
with the subject and the opportunity. Touching with 
delicacy upon French excesses and the first commotion 
which the treaty had excited, the movements of passion, 
which are quicker than those of the understanding, 
deprecating all foreign partisanship, and making no 
attempt to vaunt unduly the merits of the treaty as 
other Federalists had done, he pressed home with 
earnestness and force the strongest points in favor of 
passing the present appropriation. These points were, 
the inconsistency of letting negotiation operate a full 
treaty ratified in every particular, and then claiming the 
right to defeat its execution afterwards ; the wound to 
the public honor of this nation should the public faith 
be violated; the certainty of both foreign war and 
anarchy, as he viewed it, if the proposed treaty should 
fail in this manner. It was in depicting the horrors 
which, to his mind, depressed under the influence of a 
deep-seated malady, were sure to follow so dangerous 
a course, that Ames's eloquence took its loftiest flight, 
moving his hearers to tears. He pictured the new fron- 
tier war which would be provoked by Britain's con- 
tinued retention of the posts— the blaze of the log 
houses, the war-whoop of the Indians, the bound vic- 
tims, all the terrors of 1794 repeated. Beckoning to 



56 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

his hearers like the spectre of some disembodied hero 
who awaits the cock-crow before returning to the shades 
of an invisible world, Ames held his long familiar 
associates spellbound by a vivid imagery of these 
dreadful scenes and a pathos of expression worthy of 
Jonathan Edwards. "Even the minutes I have spent 
in expostulation," were his closing solemn words, "have 
their value, because they protract the crisis and the short 
period in which alone we may resolve to escape it. Yet 
I have, perhaps, as little personal interest in the event as 
any one here. There is, I believe, no member who will 
not think his chance to be a witness of the consequences 
greater than mine. If, however, the vote should pass 
to reject, and a spirit should rise, as it will, with the 
public disorders to make confusion worse confounded, 
even I, slender and almost broken as my hold on life 
is, may outlive the government and constitution of my 
country." 

This speech, whose pathetic utterances were wrung 
from a suffering heart, carried the day, not without 
compassion for the sufferer, for it was blind Milton 
reciting "Paradise Lost." There was scarcely a dry 
eye in the House. Judge Iredell and the Vice-Presi- 
dent sat sobbing in the gallery together, and ejacu- 
lating: "My God! how great he is!" "Noble!" An 
adjournment was carried; but Ames's speech was un- 
answered, its impression lasted, and the vote taken the 
next day stood 49 to 49 on the question of appropria- 
tion. Dayton had come over, and others of the hesi- 
tant. Even Muhlenberg, chairman of the Committee 
of the Whole, in which this discussion took place, now 
gave his casting vote in favor of the appropriation, and 
the resolution on its final passage was carried through 
the House by 51 to 48. There were only four votes 



WASHINGTON'S FAREWELL 57 

cast against it from New England, and only four in 
favor of it from the South, but the members from the 
Middle States had decided the contest by yielding to 
eloquence and an immense external pressure from their 
constituencies. 



In September, 1796, Washington put forth a fare- 
well address, which he had long contemplated issuing, 
and upon which, with the aid of others, he had labored 
carefully. In words of solemn benediction and free 
from all strain of cant or partisanship, this address 
inculcated political maxims of whose force experience 
had convinced him, and warned the people against the 
dangers of geographical parties, of the spirit of fac- 
tion and the spirit of encroachment upon authority. 
The most apt and forcible passage, perhaps, in this 
famous and familiar state paper, and that which sank 
deepest, admonished his countrymen against foreign 
wiles and American intervention in the affairs of Eu- 
rope. The idea of detaching this continent wholly and 
forever from the cabinet ambitions and calculations of 
the Old World over the balance of power was not as 
yet well comprehended by his fellow-citizens, and here 
Washington's valedictory left an abiding impression 
upon the international policy of the United States. 

The well-chosen words in which America's vener- 
ated captain bade farewell to public station hushed fac- 
tion into silence ; and, the last rapids past, his bark went 
fitly down to a rich sunset through smooth waters, 
applauding multitudes crowding the banks, and par- 
ties emulating in respect, as though to borrow glory 
from his departing radiance. Addresses from public 
and private bodies reached Washington through the 



58 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

winter from all quarters of the Union, couched in terms 
of loyal respect and affection. The legislatures of one 
State after another responded heartily to the farewell 
address, several ordering it to be entered at length upon 
their journals ; among the rest that of Virginia, though 
reserved as to the wisdom of his late policy, now unani- 
mously expressed respect for the President's person, 
a high sense of his exalted services, and regret for his 
approaching retirement. 



CHAPTER IV. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN ADAMS. 

§ I. Period of Fifth Congress. March 4, 1797-March 3, 1799. — 
§ II. Period of Sixth Congress. March 4, 1799-March 3, 1801. 

JOHN ADAMS was inaugurated President of the 
United States in the Representatives' chamber of 
the Congress Hall at Philadelphia. There was an 
immense crowd in attendance, many ladies occu- 
pying the seats of members, and the Senators, the jus- 
tices of the Supreme Court, the cabinet officers, and the 
Spanish minister sat in distinguished array. Those 
entitled to places of special honor were announced by 
the doorkeeper as they entered from behind and ap- 
proached the Speaker's desk. Washington, whose 
coach and four had stopped opposite the door of Inde- 
pendence Hall, walked through an avenue which the 
crowd had formed, and entered the Federal building 
i cheered lustily. The inside applause, which was deaf- 
ening, commenced the moment he entered the Federal 
hall as his name was called, and walked less deliber- 
ately than usual to take the seat assigned him on the 
right of the Speaker's chair; for it was remarked that 
he seemed hardly self-possessed and calm, but hurried 
as though desirous of escaping greater marks of respect 
than were due to a private citizen. Jefferson, who had 
taken his official oath as Vice-President at 11 o'clock, 
and assumed his new functions over the Senate in an 



60 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

easy and rather trifling manner, next entered, and, sep- 
arately announced and applauded, proceeded to occupy 
the corresponding seat on the left. He appeared tall, 
straight, good-tempered rather than imposing, his foxy 
hair very slightly powdered. Last was called the name 
of the chief man of the occasion, the new President, and 
John Adams came slowly down the aisle, dressed in a 
light-drab suit, with his hair powdered and in a bag. 
He bowed on each side in response to the plaudits which 
greeted him as he advanced, and mounting the plat- 
form took his seat in the Speaker's chair. Speaker 
Dayton sat in the clerk's seat below. At high noon 
two brass fieldpieces stationed in Potter's Field fired a 
salute, and Adams rose, bowed to different sides of the 
room, and delivered his inaugural address. 

This address, one of the very best of the kind, was 
a strong, fearless, incisive production, quite character- 
istic of the author, evincing an admirable comprehen- 
sion of those general maxims which ought to serve for 
the general guidance of an American administration, 
and at the same time vindicating his own inflexible 
attachment to free government and the constitution. 
Here, as upon the recent occasion of taking his leave 
of the Senate, he made an effort to dispel the old 
calumny that he was one who preferred a monarchy, 
and he meant to establish his title to public confidence 
as one who could well afford to stand upon a life-long 
record of patriotic service. A disposition to delicate 
dealing with State governments was avowed on his 
part; an impartial regard of the rights and interests 
of the whole Union, without sectional preferences; a 
resolution to do justice by all nations while avoiding 
the pestilence of foreign influence; a desire to be just 



INAUGURATION OF ADAMS 61 

and humane in internal concerns, and to improve agri- 
culture, manufactures, and commerce; and, finally, a 
veneration for the Christian religion. All these ideas 
were conceived and expressed in a comprehensive and 
catholic spirit. 

In two points John Adams strained his emotions in 
order to make a good impression on his audience. 
Concerning the French nation he expressed a personal 
esteem on his part, formed in a residence of seven years 
chiefly among them, besides "a sincere desire to pre- 
serve the friendship which has been so much for the 
honor and interest of both nations." And with refer- 
ence to his predecessor he turned, bowing towards the 
close, to pay him a graceful and laudatory tribute, 
which was greeted with acclamation, all the audience 
standing. These were the two themes uppermost in 
men's minds on this occasion. 

At the conclusion of his speech the oath of office was 
administered by Ellsworth, the Chief Justice, Adams 
making his responses with fervor ; after which the new 
President retired. An amusing strife of courtesy now 
ensued between Jefferson and Washington ; the former 
attempting in vain to make the ex-President take prece- 
dence ; and as the Vice-President finally walked up the 
aisle with Washington behind him, a loud shout went 
up; and then the audience jostled and rushed to the 
main entrance to get a last look at their chief of men. 

Acccompanied by Pickering, Washington walked to 
the hotel where his successor now lodged, for the pur- 
pose of paying his personal respects, a crowd pressing 
after. The door was closed, but it presently opened 
again, and Washington stood there with uncovered 
head; he bowed three times and slowly retired, and 



62 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

then the crowd gradually dispersed, most of them to 
behold him no more. 

Three measures, all born of a single session, — the 
new Naturalization Act, the Alien Acts, and the Sedi- 
tion Act, — for which the Federalist leaders 
were solely responsible, apart from their con- 
stituencies, weighted their party and the administration 
with all the odium of a wilful attempt to crush out 
political opponents rather than win them, and to 
weed the foreign-born out of the Union. The spirit 
of American institutions, and those safeguards which 
our constitution had diligently provided, forbade the 
extensive execution of such laws in the sense desired ; 
while in the end that sullen obstinacy with which the 
authors clung to their miserable experiment, regard- 
less of the voice of popular warning, overwhelmed Fed- 
eralism presently with such utter disaster that it sank 
to rise no more. 

These acts were not passed in the midst of a fierce 
and bloody revolution nor while a foreign war was 
raging, for then the violence, temporary only, and vin- 
dicated or else atoned afterwards, might have been for- 
given. Indeed, they were projected, and that too in 
their very worst shape, before any tidings of the French 
mission beyond the X, Y, Z dispatches had reached this 
country, and when it was not certain that our embassy 
would fail ; in a season, doubtless, of great public ex- 
citement, but where that excitement was directed to 
repelling in effect the expected invaders who had not 
approached these shores and never would. The only 
ground on which the Federalists sought openly to jus- 
tify their present extreme measures was the suppres- 
sion of all combinations between American Democrats 



ALIEN AND SEDITION ACTS 63 

and the French army against our aristocrats and the 
ruling class; combinations which Harper and others 
affirmed were here, but for whose existence not the 
slightest proof ever appeared beyond, possibly, that 
afforded by a rare admission of communications from 
foreign official sources into the columns of some party 
newspapers; while the evidence is positive that our 
most influential Republicans, like Jefferson, Madison, 
and Gallatin, knew nothing whatever of French rela- 
tions at this period, outside the usual channels which 
our Executive controlled. That, besides this unfounded 
fear, operated the desire of ultra Federalists to take 
revenge upon those presses which had assailed the Brit- 
ish treaty and other pet measures and abused Federal 
leaders, and the determination to entrench themselves 
in authority by forcibly disbanding an opposition party 
which had attracted a readier support at the polls from 
the oppressed of other countries, like the Irish, Scotch, 
and French immigrants, no candid writer can at this 
day question. In order to accomplish their main pur- 
pose, the Federalists in the Alien Acts, as though the 
constitution were framed to protect natives alone, de- 
liberately set aside trial by jury, and subjected those 
whom this government had but recently encouraged to 
seek an asylum and speedy citizenship to the arbitrary 
disposal, alien friends and alien enemies alike, of the 
chief Executive; and in the Sedition Act, distrusting 
the political bias or tenderer forbearance of State courts 
and prosecutors, they committed the accusation and 
sentence to Federal officers and tribunals, — in either 
case violating the spirit of our fundamental ordinance 
in order to insure a direction of the machinery favor- 
able to their party ends. 

To this persecuting policy, in its full significance, 



64 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

the present Federalist leaders, with the exception of 
their greatest, Hamilton (himself an alien-born, and of 
a mind too comprehensive in its grasp not to take in 
dangers which escaped the notice of the others), now 
strongly committed themselves. Adams, whose prac- 
tice proved kinder here than his theory, dropped, in 
some of his more indiscreet responses to the patriotic 
addresses, angry threats of an authority to correct the 
delusions which had led so many astray. The stern 
and relentless Secretary of State feared only that the 
measures as actually passed did not go far enough. 
Not a Federalist member of Congress had an apologetic 
word to utter for invading rights held hitherto sacred, 
nor a regret to express that political censors and the 
press needed the shackles. 

It may be admitted that the Alien and Sedition Acts 
were not so dangerous, as actually passed, as they ap- 
peared in the preliminary stages. But we are to judge 
of the political animus of a party in no slight degree 
by what it attempts; and, as a historical fact, to the 
opposition at a late stage of the very members whose 
discomfiture was thereby intended and of the very 
newspapers to be throttled, rather than to the liberal 
inclinations of partisans who fathered these measures, 
we owe it chiefly that the Naturalization, Alien, and 
Sedition Acts stopped short of a tyranny, utterly de- 
testable ; so true is it, as the House showed by compari- 
son with the Senate, that the salvation of a political 
majority lies in the constant need of confronting a vig- 
orous minority and public opinion. 

In November the legislature of Kentucky made a 
startling protest against the constitutional- 
ity of the Alien and Sedition Acts, in a series 
of resolutions which John Breckinridge introduced, 



KENTUCKY AND VIRGINIA 65 

and which declared each act to be "not law but alto- 
gether void and of no force." These resolutions passed 
with but a few dissenting votes. A few weeks later the 
Virginia legislature, under John Taylor's lead, passed 
in December resolutions of similar drift but more mod- 
erate expression, pronouncing the Alien and Sedition 
Acts "palpable and alarming infractions of the consti- 
tution." The Kentucky resolutions instructed the dele- 
gates of that State to use their best efforts to procure a 
repeal of the obnoxious acts, while those of both Ken- 
tucky and Virginia made a solemn appeal to the other 
States, as though for a concurrence of sentiment, which 
might stimulate, if need be, a closer co-operation here- 
after. These Kentucky resolutions were drafted in a 
bolder form by Jefferson, while those of Virginia pro- 
ceeded more directly from Madison's pen. Jefferson's 
leading idea was to resolve the obnoxious acts uncon- 
stitutional and void, and assuming a defiant attitude 
towards the Federal Union in a corresponding sense, to 
push the principle of resistance to Congress, though 
only so far as events might render it prudent and de- 
sirable. 

In thus organizing a revolt of the commune against 
class tyranny, against the suppression of free speech, 
the shackling of the press, and the outlawry of men 
who had sought these shores as an asylum from oppres- 
sion, Jefferson calculated nicely the strength of the two 
opposing forces. This was to his mind a politic and 
political warfare, requiring firmness, but a passive firm- 
ness. Of his attachment to the Union, his recent letter 
to John Taylor was strong indication. Virginia and 
Kentucky, he hoped, would make such a diversion of 
opinion in the Middle States that the Federal govern- 
ment would not dare coerce; and he doubtless compre- 



66 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

hended well that the blood stirs more to rouse the lion 
of revolutionary resistance than the hare of tame pro- 
test. But in his ardor when drafting these bold reso- 
lutions, he struck into a line of argument which asserted 
a dangerous latitude of discretion for States, or rather 
for State legislatures, over Federal legislation, a latitude 
which neither Breckinridge nor the judicious Madison 
chose fully at this time to approve, nor Jefferson himself 
to claim again. All the old thirteen States north of the 
Potomac hastened to disavow the idea that State legis- 
latures could at discretion revise and disapprove a sol- 
emn act of Congress. But the discussion thus elicited 
served its main purpose in separating more clearly the 
friends and foes of the present proscriptive enactments ; 
the curvature of the one party caused the other to bend 
in the opposite and more dangerous direction; and 
ardent Federalists in the State legislatures who now 
proceeded to affirm both the constitutionality and policy 
of the Alien and Sedition laws vindicated their con- 
sistency at the expense of their statesmanship.* 



At whatever point the authors and zealous promoters 
of the Sedition law and sedition prosecutions meant 

*Madison, who survived the South Carolina troubles in 1832, 
was most strenuous at that date to condemn the theory of nulli- 
fication as then propounded by Calhoun, and to clear both himself 
and Jefferson, so far as possible, from the imputation of having 
fathered such a heresy, in the above Kentucky and Virginia reso- 
lutions. It is matter of record that Madison, by modifying the 
ideas Jefferson had furnished him, prepared resolutions and an 
address for the Virginia legislature, so adroitly and yet so forcibly 
worded as to keep the State within constitutional bounds, and hint 
only at forcible resistance, while urging sister States to concert in 
a strictly legitimate protest. The resolutions in Kentucky pro- 
posed still more temperate action, though asserting bolder dog- 
mas, Jefferson's preamble being taken but not his conclusion. 



DEATH OF WASHINGTON 67 

that punishment for opposing government measures 
directed by proper authority, and trying to bring the 
President into contempt or disrepute, should cease, they 
evidently did not consider themselves debarred from 
thwarting President Adams when his executive course 
in foreign affairs interfered with their own designs, nor 
from combining to displace him from power as a vain, 
frantic, and obstinate man, now that he had succeeded 
in thwarting them. The Cabinet malcontents stirred up 
their friends to believe with them that unless Adams 
withdrew his name from the approaching canvass a 
national defeat of the party was inevitable. 

The first secret cabals of the discontented contem- 
plated bringing out Washington again for a third term. 
But the magnanimous soul which never could have 
stooped to the base uses of any party faction for a 
party emergency sped the scene whose sorest need of 
his service had vanished. Death sent a sud- 1799 . 
den shaft to the heart which calumny had so December M . 
long assailed in vain ; and scarcely had a new Congress 
convened and organized before the two Houses were 
called upon to pay their last public honors to "the man, 
first in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his 
fellow-citizens." 

It has been the posthumous distinction of Wash- 
ington to retain that first place, and to enjoy the name 
and fame of patriot father in each succeeding lustrum 
of American history, besides a world-wide renown be- 
yond that of all others ever born, reared, and educated 
on American soil — a soil which was the sole arena of 
his life achievements. His eulogy was the grief of 
united millions, who had gradually become impressed 
by the beauty of a life devoted to their welfare, and 
who learned at last to realize that wherever and when- 



68 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ever party issues might touch him, the ether Washing- 
ton breathed was always that where "eternal sunshine 
settles." France and Napoleon paid tributes to his 
memory not less touching than Great Britain. But 
unlike the rising Corsican, Washington stood securely 
on his pedestal as one who had subserved the cause of 
liberty always, instead of bringing liberty to subserve 
his private ambition. For one of the world's genuine 
heroes, his fame was well bestowed. Unlike Epami- 
nondas, he left behind him a unity of States, too firmly 
compacted to perish with himself; nor did assassina- 
tion deprive him of the sweets of public gratitude as 
it had the great Orange. Rewarded in the declining 
years of his life with a popular confidence like that be- 
stowed in a more primitive age and a narrower circle 
upon Timoleon of Syracuse, Washington gained from 
posterity a renown which in later times has been most 
happily epitomized: "The greatest of good men, and 
the best of great men." 



To the new Federal capital, now doubly consecrated 
in the hearts of the American people by the hallowed 

i8oo name of its deceased founder, the President 
November. we lcomed Congress at its second and final 
session, congratulating the two Houses "on the pros- 
pect of a residence not to be changed." The removal 
of the Federal government to this sequestered and un- 
populous region, over which it exercised exclusive 
jurisdiction, proved most timely; for had the closing 
scenes of so exciting a Presidential contest been enacted 
at Philadelphia, there would undoubtedly have been 
serious riots and probably bloodshed. 

This was, indeed, a place for central seclusion. All 



NEW CAPITAL CITY 69 

the way from Baltimore one rode hither through thick 
woods, seeing scarcely a house or a human being. An 
unfinished block on Capitol Hill marked the site of that 
great purchase of six thousand lots which had hastened 
the insolvency of Morris, Greenleaf, and Nicholson; 
their agreement with the government to build brick 
houses remaining unfulfilled. Scarcely five hundred 
inhabitants had yet appeared in the new city ; and they 
were chiefly negroes and foreign laborers needful on 
the public works, who dwelt in cheap huts. Only the 
north wing of the splendid Capitol, commenced on this 
wooded height, whose southeast corner-stone Wash- 
ington himself laid in 1793, with masonic ceremonies, 
peered above the clustering oaks. The President's 
house, some two miles to the westward, had been 
planned on a liberal scale, and was decently fit for hab- 
itation; but the plastering was damp, and some of the 
commonest conveniences were wanting. No fencing 
was yet visible in the city; brick-kilns peeped out here 
and there like ant-hills; nothing, wrote Wolcott, was 
plenty except provisions. So few and so scattered were 
the houses that comfortable quarters for the represen- 
tatives of the nation could only be had in the neighbor- 
hood of Georgetown, whither, to the confusion of 
L'Enfant's plans, the gregarious and fashionably in- 
clined must consequently have tended. 

The excitement of the Presidential campaign had 
been intense. But the electoral issue having reduced 
itself mainly into a rival contest for capturing State 
legislatures, the immediate wishes of the people had 
been of secondary consideration. 

It was not the national rivalry between Federalists 
and Republicans, as the event proved, which was here 
to jeopardize the Presidential title, but that fatal clause 



70 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

of the constitution, as it then stood, under which each 
elector cast his two ballots without designating which 
should be President and which Vice-President. While 
their own dark intrigues for the "double chance" were 
frustrated this fall beyond a peradventure by the pru- 
dent dropping out of a single Pinckney ballot in Rhode 
Island, and both their candidates were defeated more- 
over, the ultra Federalists found a new opportunity 
presented for baffling the public wishes by an unex- 
pected tie which occurred between Jefferson and Burr, 
whose electors appear to have held too faithfully to- 
gether in the double vote for the immediate interests of 
the party. This, of course, prevented, and for the first 
time in our history, a constitutional choice of President 
by electors, and devolved the duty upon a House con- 
trolled by the political opponents of both Jefferson and 
Burr to decide which of the two they should make the 
Chief Magistrate. 

The day for the meeting of electoral colleges had 
l8oI been placed by law at the first Wednesday of 
February. December, and the second Wednesday of 
February following was the day fixed for opening the 
certificates and counting the votes. The two Houses, 
both of them inconveniently quartered in the north 
wing of the Capitol, assembled on the i ith of February 
in the Senate Chamber for the latter purpose. The 
count of the tellers showed, as already anticipated, that 
Jefferson and Burr had each y$ electoral votes, Adams 
65, Pinckney 64, and Jay 1. As presiding officer of 
the Senate, the unwelcome duty devolved upon Jeffer- 
son of announcing that there was a tie vote between 
himself and Burr. Upon this announcement the House 
returned to its own chamber, there to continue in ses- 
sion, as that body had already resolved, without pro- 



THE ELECTORAL TIE 71 

ceeding to other business, till a President should be 
chosen. 



The ill-success of the Presidency of John Adams, 
regarded from a personal and party standpoint, — for 
in respect of the nation's interests it was by no means a 
failure, — we may trace in part to the unfortunate cir- 
cumstances by which Adams was surrounded, and in 
part to faults inseparable from his headstrong and orig- 
inal character. He was unfortunate, first of all, in being 
the immediate successor of a President so transcendent 
in all those qualities which mark the practical admin- 
istrator and command confidence as Washington; a 
successor, too, the first of that style, and committed 
substantially to the same line of policy and dependent 
upon the same elements for his active political support. 
It was a lengthening shadow that his more illustrious 
predecessor cast down nearly his whole official path- 
way ; and for the year which followed Washington's 
death — the last months nearly of this present adminis- 
tration — the public grief was too great to be assuaged 
or diverted. The new President followed the old, there- 
fore, seemingly at a long distance for the whole round, 
and was forced to perform various deferential tasks 
which only a spirit modest, venerating, and unenvious 
could have performed with cheerfulness. Adams was 
next unfortunate in inheriting from that former admin- 
istration, admirable as it had been in most respects, its 
very serious embarrassment with France, which, com- 
plicated as it became by Talleyrand's misconduct, was 
not at length overcome without causing a sudden and 
almost ludicrous collapse of warlike enthusiasm on the 
part of our people; while subjecting them to those very 



72 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

serious accompaniments of war, lavish expenditure, 
burdensome taxation, internal oppression; and breed- 
ing, besides, in the minds of influential partisans, those 
fancies of feverish ambition which are not easily dis- 
missed. Adams was finally unfortunate in having been 
promoted to the command of political chieftains who 
neither implicitly trusted him nor performed loyal ser- 
vice; of a party remarkably intelligent, yet undisci- 
plined, and liable to be led astray by malignant and 
caballing influences; and of Cabinet counsellors, un- 
worthy the name, who set up for planets when they 
should have revolved as satellites. 

But to a considerable degree John Adams was his 
own worst enemy for bearing successfully the respon- 
sibilities of Chief Magistrate under an elective govern- 
ment like ours. He was vain, jealous of rivals, ready 
to suspect the worst where he suspected at all, over- 
imaginative, irascible, stubborn, impatient of advice, 
apt to push his way in blind rage and regardless of con- 
sequences where his temper was aroused. Such an 
Executive is not easily influenced for good except by 
those who humor him in his moods and take care not to 
cross his prerogative; others may impress, indeed, if 
their views are sound, but not correspondingly. The 
brusque manners of Adams, his imprudence of expres- 
sion, and indiscreet plain speaking (to the extent almost 
of thinking aloud, as one has described him), though 
not necessarily offensive to personal friends and equals 
who could take him as he meant, were to most men, 
especially while Adams occupied the highest dignity in 
the land and stood without official equal, an obstacle 
to free intercourse and the mutual interchange of opin- 
ions. Unlike Washington, who so sedulously sought 
advice, the new President seemed to confer with others 



CHARACTER OF ADAMS 73 

rather for the purpose of imparting his own views, and 
those most likely in the crude, and before gaining pos- 
session of all the data needful; and he had that ten- 
dency, so disagreeable to one who brings suggestions, 
of talking others down. Advice worked upon him; 
but by what process was not sufficiently obvious to flat- 
ter the person offering it, since the first impression con- 
veyed to Adams's mind by the tender of counsel 
appeared to be the disagreeable one that he stood sadly 
in need of it; and hence, while the admonition might 
sink deep, the person admonishing became painfully 
conscious of striking at once upon an envious and sensi- 
tive surface, which emitted angry sparks as from a flint. 
In this important respect our two earliest Presidents 
strongly contrasted; and so, too, in those lesser cour- 
tesies of life such as draw closer or soothe irritation; 
for while the one could by his suavity conquer an ene- 
my, the other imperilled the most essential friendship 
of his term by his jealous or heedless inattention. 

The honest, simple frankness of Adams's nature was 
the main obstacle to the display of that light polish of 
daily life which lends such a charm to urbanity, well 
as he could comport himself on great occasions; but 
other traits interfered with such amenities, not so cred- 
itable to him. If it be not literally true, as some opine, 
that Adams, as President, would make an odious 
measure more odious still by his manner of executing 
it, we are compelled to admit that, at least, he too often 
displayed an unfortunate capacity for taking all the 
grace out of a kindly and favoring action, and stifling 
all sense of gratitude in the recipient, by the unkindly 
or ungracious manner in which he performed it. How- 
ever near he might have ventured to the ground of the 
opposition leaders at times, away from his own party 



74 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

lines, he seemed to feel it as necessary to deride their 
position as did the party Federalists, who, more con- 
sistent, blamed him for wandering thither. 

What exposed Adams all the more readily to censure 
and misapprehension was his constant indisposition in 
private speech to acknowledge to their full the broad 
and lofty motives which impelled his public conduct, 
as though once again to point a contrast with his pred- 
ecessor, whose calm morality was too much a matter 
of principle for him to think of being shamefaced over 
it. Adams, pure, disinterested, upright, as we must 
conceive him in the main, had yet that dread of cant 
which marks a faulty but heroic nature struggling with 
itself and yielding much to impulse. Hence in the effort 
not to seem better than he really was, he managed at 
times to appear much worse ; giving partial, trivial, un- 
satisfactory reasons to others for acts which some 
strong conviction of right, some brave resolution well- 
ing from the lower depths of his generous and inde- 
pendent nature, must have led him to perform. He 
would talk like a Diogenes of men and motives, and 
profess his utter contempt for the public whose inter- 
ests he was doubtless serving with all his might. His 
ambition for distinction was both purer and more in- 
tense than he owned to himself. 

Adams was, as those who knew him best had 
observed before his present elevation, a bad calculator 
of the probable motives of other men, nor possessed of 
the requisite skill for managing them. Vehement as 
he had been in earlier years, so as to move these 
Colonies to declare for independence, it was his elo- 
quence, his scholarship, his literary abilities, and the 
earnestness of his conviction as one of a deliberative 



CHARACTER OF ADAMS 75 

body among his peers, that carried persuasion. When 
it came to Executive duties and being looked up to as 
a political commander, the conditions of success were 
very different. Adams was not steady and sure in his 
guidance, nor sufficiently in the habit of directing other 
minds, to impress a policy upon those without whose 
willing co-operation it must fail. Rather did he let 
affairs drift so far as legislators might have the power 
of control, while he, for his part, regulated his own 
department, and most especially the diplomatic part of 
it, with a predilection for managing it as he might see 
fit. As all worked apart so much, the legislature not 
consorting with the Executive, and the Executive unin- 
fluential in the legislature, his most desired measures 
passed with difficulty; while other acts went through 
Congress imposing onerous and unpopular duties upon 
him, which he appears to have had no special influence 
in shaping, but for which, withholding his veto, he ap- 
peared to the ungrateful public willing enough to take 
more than his share as sponsor. With more culpable 
indiscretion he permitted official subordinates, stern, 
narrow-minded, and moreover interested in their mo- 
tives, to present to the country an administration far 
more spiteful and intolerant than he desired it, and less 
dispassionate in its foreign policy. Eccentric move- 
ments, sudden starts, inconsistent turnings perplexed 
the spectator ; and this happened because the reins were 
handled by too many Phaetons, while Phoebus took his 
vacation and exercised only a sort of intermittent au- 
thority. For instead of allotting to each subordinate 
his just responsibility within his own sphere and pre- 
scribing the rules for all, instead of taking personal heed 
to the whole business of the Executive, the President 



76 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

would let department heads combine to pull the admin- 
istration, with outside assistance, in whatever direction 
they might, until they got so far wrong that he had to 
interpose again to set things as they should be. All this 
was partly because of his laxness as a disciplinarian, 
his indolence, his inaptitude for organizing, his indiffer- 
ence to routine details, his unbusinesslike habits; and, 
as we may further apprehend, too, because Adams, 
somewhat aware of his own shortcomings in respect of 
moulding and conciliating other minds so as to keep 
the topmost place securely in a political party, schooled 
himself in such a sense as to give others their unhin- 
dered way with whom he thought it impolitic to break, 
but whose opinions he knew not how to respect, nor 
how to adapt their public ends to the promotion of those 
he desired himself to pursue. While Washington had 
kept all things, great and small, under counsel, Adams 
worked without system or vigilance in the smaller con- 
cerns. With a mind too vigorous to feel the need of 
another's advice, he encouraged others unintentionally 
to misrepresent and misdirect his policy and lead the 
general public to false estimates of his probable con- 
duct. It was with reference, perhaps, to his proneness 
for producing such external misconceptions, as well 
as to those fitful gusts of temper and speculations which 
caused him so to veer in his solitary course, that the 
sagacious Franklin once made the remark, of late fre- 
quently repeated by his political enemies, that Adams 
was "always an honest man, often a wise one, but 
sometimes wholly out of his senses." 

Adams had, nevertheless, great virtues as well as 
great failings. Ambitious though he might be, he was 
the soul of earnest patriotism, and his ideal was always 
a lofty one, even should execution fall short of it. An 



CHARACTER OF ADAMS 77 

accomplished scholar, a statesman who had experienced 
much and travelled far, one of a vigorous and far- 
reaching intellect, he comprehended with great wisdom 
the most difficult problems which his administration 
encountered. With all his neglect of the small things, 
he had, doubtless, more than others appreciated, a 
fixed system as to the great; and this in his foreign 
policy most particularly, whose management he re- 
served peculiarly to himself, aware, doubtless, of the 
delicacy required in so grave a situation, and confident 
that he understood European politics and diplomacy 
better than any of his advisers. The general maxims 
he prescribed in his inaugural address were admirable. 
Adams may fairly be styled the father of our Amer- 
ican navy; for to his perseverance and steady interest 
in its establishment we owe it that this arm of the ser- 
vice was placed for the first time upon a substantial 
and permanent footing. His penetrating mind had dis- 
covered, quite in advance of his times, that the belliger- 
ents of the Old World would not respect American 
commerce while it remained defenceless, and that the 
first successful war with France or England must be 
waged by us behind wooden walls rather than ramparts. 
Whimsical and wrong-headed as Adams might be 
when the vapors of a wounded self-esteem steamed up 
and beclouded his vision, he was, apart from his pecul- 
iar foibles, consistent, just and upright; broad in his 
views and singularly disinterested. He was a states- 
man whose general honesty of purpose could always 
be relied upon; magnanimous when calm; disposed, 
though combative of disposition, to make amends 
where he had acted hastily and passionately, and con- 
sorting with men of liberal and enlightened views. 
"Nearly all of the great appointments to office during 



EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 



his term which were purely of his own selection were 
not merely good but excellent, and worthy of compari- 
son with any made by his predecessor; those, for in- 
stance, of Marshall (whose rapid advancement in public 
station was owing largely to the favor of our second 
President), Stoddert, and Dexter; of both sets of en- 
voys to France, Gerry possibly excepted; and of the 
naval commanders. His admirable qualities as a hus- 
band and father, his fondness for his farm, and the 
bosom confidence which he bestowed upon those at 
home, of his hopes and disappointments, attest the 
healthiness of his moral nature ; though one must admit 
that his private virtues were not practised without 
some public detriment, inasmuch as long absence from 
his duties obstructed business, and his ambition to 
found a family conspicuous in national station exposed 
him to the imputation of nepotism. Except for some 
ill-considered utterances in the season of war fever, his 
state papers, messages, and addresses were lofty and 
well expressed, with clear, terse, ringing words and 
sentences, eminently characteristic of the man, and sure 
to produce a popular impression; and his bearing in 
public was dignified and manly, the more pleasing to his 
countrymen now that he had lowered the standard of 
courtly etiquette with which he had set out as Vice- 
President. He maintained well the bearing of an 
American Chief Executive in the eyes of the people so 
far as one, whose bravery was that of an eminent civil- 
ian alone, might be expected to. An Adams could stand 
courageously even when he had to stand alone ; no bet- 
ter proof of which need be recalled than the grandly 
independent and fearless course he took in sending his 
second and successful embassy to France in 1799, giv- 
ing peace and unexampled prosperity to his country 



DOWNFALL OF FEDERAL PARTY 79 

(as he asserted later), against the advice, entreaties, 
and intrigues of his ministers and all the leading Fed- 
eralists in both Houses of Congress. This, the most 
questioned of all his actions, for which his breast re- 
ceived the poisoned arrows of malicious foes within his 
own party, years after his unwelcome retirement from 
public station, was, if we except the burning record of 
1776, "the most disinterested, the most determined, 
prudent, and successful of his whole life." 

With all his speculative tendencies unfavorable to 
Republican experiments, his preference for a strong 
government and executive power, John Adams was in 
closer sympathy with the people than most leaders of 
the party to which he belonged, and a more genuine 
American. Hateful of European governments alike, 
he loved his country best of all. To be "king of the 
commons," in a practical sense, would not have ill- 
chimed with his ambitious fancies; but monarchist he 
could not be at heart in the United States, and he be- 
came well-nigh a Jeffersonian Republican before he 
died. 



The Federalist party, indeed, was already too 
cramped an organization to hold him. That party had 
done its greatest and fittest work by the time it ac- 
complished its earliest: that, in brief, of framing and 
establishing the more perfect Union, which, with later 
changes, has stood ever since secure. Public gratitude, 
and the disruption of political opponents, procured a 
continuance in power under the wing of Washington 
sufficiently long for establishing the public credit, de- 
veloping the resources of a new nation, concluding 
peace with the Indians and chief European countries, 



80 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

and raising the United States to a respectable position 
before the civilized world. But while each new cham- 
ber was added to the shell, the nautilus had been work- 
ing out. Great leaders had left the party; and by the 
time Washington died and the last treaty was ratified, 
under a successor, which detached the American Union 
from this European war, all the vitality which beauti- 
fied Federalism was gone. Claims it certainly had still 
to public gratitude; but gratitude for the past will not 
preserve that party in the public estimation which lags 
in the work of the immediate present. Already had the 
political leaders with whom Federalism was now most 
identified taken to preparing feigned issues to supply 
the want of genuine ones; and they strove by playing 
upon the wildest fears and prejudices of the multitude 
to perpetuate themselves and their party in power. 
The bickerings of great rivals, the bureau intrigues 
against Adams and that foreign policy of pacification 
which the country most desired, the centralizing 
schemes, the usurious loans, the high salaries, the 
multiplicity of offices, the taxes, the provisional armies, 
the exhausting war preparations without an enemy in 
sight — all this, even such of it as prudence might well 
have justified, was lead to the neck of the party which 
struggled to bear up the general responsibilities through 
an angry sea. 

No political party in a time of popular commotion 
could ever boast in America a more splendid body of 
voters; social rank, talent, wealth, learning, supported 
Federalism, in New England more especially. But in 
that same section where the brain of the party was 
located, and among those whom Hamilton chiefly influ- 
enced, were to be seen too many leaders whose tastes 



DOWNFALL OF FEDERAL PARTY 81 

were infallibly to keeping up a rule of social caste, and 
who despised too greatly our essay at self-rule and the 
sense of a commonalty. A government like ours could 
not walk alone, they thought, nor hardly stand, and 
they must guide its footsteps. On the contrary, the 
time had now come when political nurture could be dis- 
pensed with, and a healthy, robust public opinion 
allowed an oportunity to develop. The Alien and Se- 
dition laws, all that machinery for compulsory disci- 
pline, tottered to the ground, carrying those who had 
sought to erect it. Federalism was lost in the first hour 
of its absolute supremacy, and as soon as it essayed in 
earnest to rule the American people by its own effete 
maxims. 

Unfitted by temperament for dealing with the new 
conditions presented in our constitutional American 
experiment, bewildered, indocile, as little capable of 
playing sycophant to the common mass as of believing 
in a self-constrained democracy, the leaders hitherto 
prominent in national affairs soon disappeared from the 
scene, or remained to play the part of useless obstruct- 
ors. Some of the greatest Federalists withdrew into 
the Judiciary Department, there to escape political re- 
sponsibility. Others became governors and legislators 
in their native States. Wrapping himself in his man- 
tle of pride, the Bourbon Federalist watched wearily 
for Jacobinism to run out its course. The sun of Fed- 
eralism had sunk forever, going down in the murky 
sunset of its discreditable Presidential intrigues. The 
first national party to conduct the affairs of this Consti- 
tutional Union expired with the administration of the 
second President. Hushed was its voice of command. 
And yet so constantly had it ruled, so firmly, and in the 



82 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 



main so beneficently, even when despotically, that men 
gathered in its death-chamber like that of the great 
Roman emperor, and tendered their homage to the illus- 
trious remains as they lay in solemn pomp, long after 
the last vital breath had departed. 



CHAPTER V. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

§ I. Period of Seventh Congress. March 4, 1801-March 3, 1803. 
— § II. Period of Eighth Congress. March 4, 1803-March 3, 
1805. 

THE first inaugural ceremonies ever conducted 
at the permanent capital of this nation took 
place on the 4th of March, 1801, at noon, 
when Thomas Jefferson was there inducted into office, 
as the third President of the United States. 

Though the order of exercises was similar to that 
of former occasions, and the day was celebrated in Phil- 
adelphia and the Virginia towns with speeches, pro- 
cessions, salutes, and the ringing of bells, the scene 
at the Federal capital was unimposing, as befitted the 
inauguration, in a forest city, of one who at all times 
looked with singular contempt upon dazzling and osten- 
tatious public spectacles. Pennsylvania Avenue was 
not the scene of a military pageant; it was as yet 
scarcely more than a footway cut through bushes and 
briers and aided in places by gravel and chips of free- 
stone. Attired in the dress of a plain citizen, Jefferson 
crossed over to the Capitol from his lodgings at Con- 
rad's, on the hill, some two hundred paces distant, to 
take the oath of office. Whether he went on foot, or 
rode his horse, — dismounting, on this occasion, as he 
often used to do later, when paying Congress a visit, 
and then hitching the steed unaided, — is in historical 



84 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

dispute ; but in either case posterity is taught the same 
impressive lesson of ceremonial simplicity. He en- 
tered the Senate chamber at the north wing, which, 
being partly finished, might accommodate both Houses. 
That there was something of a procession appears most 
probable; for Jefferson came attended by a number of 
his fellow-citizens, mounted and on foot. He found 
the new freestone structure thronged at his arrival with 
spectators eager for the induction ceremonies to begin. 

The Senate had previously convened in extra ses- 
sion, summoned by the late President ; and the polished 
Burr, by this time sworn into the office which the voice 
of his party had originally assigned to him, took posi- 
tion in the unfinished chamber, on Jefferson's right, 
while Marshall, the Chief Justice, sat upon the left. 
Many members of the late House, Federalists as well 
as Republicans, had remained over, out of respect or 
curiosity, to attend the inauguration; most of the cab- 
inet and other high functionaries of the late administra- 
tion occupied their places; but it was matter of open 
comment that neither President Adams nor Speaker 
Sedgwick was present, both having left the city at day- 
break. 

Jefferson's inaugural address remains a model of its 
kind; conciliatory, elevated in tone, full of hope and 
confidence in the American experiment ; modest, never- 
theless, as to personal merits. In a strain of eloquent 
thought, unadorned by graces of delivery — for Jeffer- 
son was no orator — he depicted "a rising nation, spread 
over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas 
with the rich productions of their industry, engaged 
in commerce with nations who feel power and forget 
right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach 
of mortal eye." Of the strength and adequacy of this, 



JEFFERSON'S INAUGURATION 85 

a republican government, for its own preservation, he 
boldly declared himself profoundly convinced. So far 
from admitting that possibly this Federal system, the 
world's best hope, was wanting in energy, "I believe 
this, on the contrary," said he, "the strongest govern- 
ment on earth. I believe it is the only one where every 
man, at the call of the laws, would fly to the standard 
of the land, and would meet invasions of the public 
order as his own personal concern." 

Introducing thus the thought that the strongest of 
rulers is the people capable of self-rule, he appealed at 
the same time for that unity of action which all politi- 
cal parties ought to subserve. Minorities should be 
generously respected. " Every difference of opinion 
is not a difference of principle. We have called by dif- 
ferent names brethren of the same principle. We are 
all Republicans. — We are Federalists. If there be any 
among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to 
change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed 
as monuments of the safety with which error of opin- 
ion may be tolerated where reason is left free to com- 
bat it." 

The inaugural address impressed the country most 
favorably. Popular government was taught to fly by 
making use of its own wings. Never had American 
executive so confided himself in language to the good 
will of those he had been elected to govern. Had he 
thus confided, or did he flatter? But, while the great 
body of Federalists saw in these maxims much to which 
they could heartily subscribe, much indeed that in the 
heat of political strife they had been taught to disso- 
ciate from Jefferson and his followers, their ruling 
minds construed this address too readily into a surren- 
der of principles and patronage. Jefferson was too 



86 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

consummate a politician to intend anything of the kind. 
His design was, of course, to harmonize parties; not, 
however, by making peace with the chieftains who had 
perversely opposed him, but by drawing from them 
their own followers. His opportunity was good for 
setting the Union on the Republican tack. The course 
of affairs in Europe had dispelled the first sanguine 
illusions of the French Revolution, and Americans were 
more cordially united in that policy of strict neutrality 
which Washington's Farewell Address commended. 
Adams had unravelled the worst knot in our foreign 
relations. Peacefully disposed towards all Europe, 
America had struck the high road to plenty and pros- 
perity. Republicanism, in order to succeed, needed, 
therefore, to develop not an external so much as an 
internal policy ; and it was upon the latter that Jefferson 
relied most at the outset to give his cause stability and 
earn the general gratitude. 



Jefferson's designs developed more clearly when he 
began appointing to office. With reference to patron- 
age the situation was certainly very delicate. For the 
first time a new national party had been lifted into 
power ; a party whose members had for the four years 
previous been jealously excluded and even removed 
from office because of their politics. None could deny 
that Republicans had a reasonable claim to vacancies 
which might occur until they should fairly participate 
in the national offices. Moreover, the recent conduct 
of prominent Federalists in the Burr intrigue, and the 
enlargement of the national judiciary as their last 
stronghold, — President Adams's ''midnight appoint- 
ments," too, as they were called, made during the ex- 



JEFFERSON'S APPOINTMENTS 87 

piring hours of his own administration, for the purpose 
of forestalling a successor's discretion whom the coun- 
try had months before elected over him, — had been too 
outrageous for the new President to overlook, much 
less to sanction. While once more Jefferson prepared 
to accept and consolidate with the Republican body the 
many Federalists who now seemed disposed to recon- 
ciliation, he perceived that pride and obstinacy would 
restrain their most powerful leaders from coalescing, 
and more particularly that in the Eastern quarter, 
where British prepossessions were strong, and the influ- 
ence of the Congregational clergy and the ruling fami- 
lies had been so constantly cast against him, prejudice 
would remain inveterate. The advice given by some 
of his more zealous political friends was to purge out 
the offices thoroughly, and the party pressure for place 
was, of course, very great. 

But Jefferson by no means inclined to the doctrine 
of portioning out official places as the spoils of a party 
or of personal triumph. While refusing, from princi- 
ple, to elevate his chief opponents to office, and deter- 
mined to ship forever out of influence the Essex junto, 
the monarchists and the British faction (so he styled 
them), as men to be tolerated but not trusted, he yet 
thought it both just and prudent to deprive none of 
office on political grounds alone. Reflection brought 
him to the following conclusions : ( 1 ) That as to the 
appointments to civil offices at executive pleasure which 
his predecessor had made after the Presidential result 
was known, no mercy should be shown. (2) That 
officers guilty of official misconduct (or, one might add, 
notoriously inefficient) were proper subjects of re- 
moval. (3) That good men differing only in political 
belief, and performing their functions diligently, were 



88 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

not proper subjects of removal. Another cause for 
removal occurred to him after some experience: that 
of electioneering activity, or of open, persistent, and 
industrious opposition to the principles of his admin- 
istration; for while, he said, every officer of the gov- 
ernment might vote at elections according to his con- 
science, he should betray the cause committed to his 
own care were he to permit the influence of official pat- 
ronage to be used to overthrow that cause. 

Jefferson's methods of appointment indicate the 
gloved hand, steadiness of purpose as well as delicacy 
in management, a combination of qualities which goes 
far towards securing political success. But beyond this 
he soon proved that he had the power of inspiring con- 
fidence and of impressing his ideas upon those with 
whom he was brought into the closest relations. No 
President ever kept such peace in his official household, 
or sat so gracefully at the head of the council board. 
His Postmaster-General and all of his cabinet advisers 
remained long in place: Madison, Gallatin, and Dear- 
born through the entire administration of eight years ; 
Gallatin and Granger some five years longer. 

"The third administration, which was of eight 
years," wrote Jefferson in 1811, "presented an exam- 
ple of harmony in a cabinet of six persons, to which 
perhaps history has furnished no parallel. There never 
arose, during the whole time, an instance of an unpleas- 
ant thought or word between the members. We some- 
times met under differences of opinion, but scarcely 
ever failed, by conversing and reasoning, so to modify 
each other's ideas as to produce a unanimous result." 
This harmony was owing, in no slight degree, to the 
rule with which the new President set out, of making 
himself a central point for the different branches of 



JEFFERSON'S CABINET 89 

the Executive, so as to preserve unity of object and 
meet the due responsibility for whatever was done. As 
he planned the work of practical administration, the 
ordinary business of every day was to be transacted 
upon consultation between the President and the head 
of that department alone to which it belonged. For 
measures of importance or difficulty consultation with 
the heads of departments was needful ; and for this he 
preferred in theory to take their opinions separately, in 
conversation or in writing; thus leaving the President 
free, without any needless clash of opinion or rivalry 
among those he had consulted, to make up an opinion 
for himself; but he practised the open cabinet method 
of his predecessors without experiencing any ill results. 
The latter is now the confirmed practice of govern- 
ment; "yet," said Jefferson, who held firmly to Presi- 
dential responsibility, "this does, in fact, transform the 
executive into a directory, and I hold the other method 
to be more constitutional." 



The ex-President found retirement, but not repose, 
at Quincy, his tempestuous nature struggling under 
a political reverse, which the opprobrium of those he 
had led to defeat, for whose own perverseness he was 
compelled to suffer, together with comparisons invited 
by the new administration to his detriment, made ter- 
ribly humiliating. A far happier privacy was that 
which rounded the useful existence of the upright and 
philanthropic Jay, who left politics voluntarily, at the 
age of fifty-six, devoting a final third of his life to works 
of benevolence, and surviving all enmities. Cheerful, 
of independent means, a devout Episcopalian, an anti- 
slavery champion, his mind did not rust in his country 



9 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

home. "I have a long life to look back upon/' he 
would say, "and an eternity to look forward to." 

Thriving, like many of his political friends, with 
the best briefs which professional eminence could com- 
mand, Hamilton grew, nevertheless, despondent of 
America, and of his personal future ; for nothing could 
reconcile such a spirit to the commonplace of life. He 
tried to enjoy the beautiful country-seat he had lately 
purchased, and his garden, "the usual refuge," as he 
would say, "of a disappointed politician." "What 
can I do better," he asked, gloomily, "than withdraw 
from the scene? Every day proves to me more and 
more that this American world was not made for me." 



The famous Louisiana treaty was signed May 3, 
1803, in the French language, and two or three days 
after in English. On the Sunday previous to its exe- 
cution, Livingston presented his colleague to Napoleon, 
and both dined with him afterwards. The Consul asked 
many questions, after his quick, catechizing fashion, 
concerning the United States, Jefferson, and the Fed- 
eral city. "You Americans," said he, "did brilliant 
things in your war with England ; you will do the same 
again." Monroe, parrying this thrust at our neutral 
policy, responded that the Americans would always 
behave well when it was their lot to go to war. Mar- 
bois relates that as soon as the three negotiators had 
signed the treaties they all rose and shook hands ; Liv- 
ingston, who was a man of dignified presence, giving 
utterance to his joy and satisfaction in feeling that the 
United States now took a position among the powers 
of the first rank. 

By this sudden, momentous, and in its full extent 



THE LOUISIANA PURCHASE 91 

and scope, unexpected acquisition of territory, the 
United States were indeed placed at the portals of an 
illustrious career. But yesterday the Mississipppi was 
the barrier of our national ambition, and a foreign king 
considered whether his own license restrained him from 
shutting up the outlet to our Western commerce. A 
stroke of the pen changed all ; and to-day a vast, unex- 
plored, almost illimitable empire was ours; perpetual 
immunity from dangerous neighbors ; sole possession 
of this river of rivers, with all its tributaries; a sure 
dominating influence in the affairs of the North Amer- 
ican continent; national opportunities for the dim 
future almost depressing in their sublimity. Where, 
now, would the long surf of our advancing civilization 
dash into spray? Hitherto natural barriers, those 
surest bound-marks and protectors from foes within 
and without, arrested our progress; henceforth, the 
tide of emigration would sweep from post to post, en- 
croaching upon foreign populations too weak every- 
where to resist; nor, unless internal decay and dis- 
memberment arrested the novel experiment, finding 
effectual bulwark or breakwater interposed east of the 
Pacific or north of the Isthmus, while an acre of de- 
sirable territory was left. Would that encroachment 
go on forever or would dismemberment interrupt it? 

Hopes and misgivings together like these filled Jef- 
ferson's mind as he contemplated the grandeur of the 
new purchase. Not fully observant of the latitude line 
which slavery had begun to draw across the Union, 
he meditated upon a possible separation which the great 
longitudinal river might at some later age accomplish. 
West Mississippi and East Mississippi might hereafter 
separate, and these millions of acres with their varied 
productions pass into the control of a confederacy de- 



92 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tached from that which now purchased them. But this 
was a remote danger, too remote to affect living men, 
and far less a present evil than that of a hostile nation's 
occupation. "The future inhabitants of the Atlantic 
and Mississippi States," such were his thoughts, "will 
be our sons. We leave them in distinct but bordering 
establishments. We think we see their happiness in 
their union, and we wish it." 

One serious doubt in Jefferson's mind was the con- 
stitutionality of thus extending the area of the United 
States. As a strict constructionist, he considered that 
our fundamental charter made no provision for acquir- 
ing new and foreign territory, still less for incorporat- 
ing foreign nations with the Union at discretion. But 
Spain's opposition on the solemn grounds we have indi- 
cated, and rumors, besides, that France had already 
repented of the bargain, determined him in favor of the 
most instant and explicit consummation; after which 
he thought appeal might be made to the nation for a 
suitable amendment to the constitution. Ultimately, 
however, he yielded his judgment in favor of the looser 
constitutional construction which Gallatin and others 
of his immediate counsellors advocated. The right of 
territorial expansion on this continent, coupled with an 
equal participation by the annexed people in funda- 
mental American rights, dangerous though such a doc- 
trine may be if pushed far, has since been firmly grafted 
upon the constitution in practice, as incidental to the 
powers originally conferred by that instrument. 



Thrust out of influence, bankrupt in purse and pros- 
pects, politically discarded by his State and by the 
national Republican party, his Federal coalition a 



BURR AND HAMILTON DUEL 93 

failure, Burr sought a desperate revenge. Unable 
to make specific charges, he now demanded imperi- 
ously of Hamilton a broad disavowal of all offensive 
expressions concerning him, or else the satisfaction 
usual among gentlemen. Finding Burr inflexible, 
Hamilton chose the latter alternative; reason and con- 
science protesting against an encounter to which his 
romantic sense of honor impelled him, and which he 
hoped to justify by sparing in any event the life of the 
man who sought his blood. He was not without pre- 
sentiment that he would be a victim ; and Burr, who felt 
no compunction, practised carefully at a mark to make 
sure of it. The duel, after being postponed to an op- 
portunity mutually convenient, took place l8o4 
in the gray of a July morning on the Jersey July "' ,2 - 
shore. The parties were prompt with their seconds and 
attendants. On the signal Burr raised his arm, took 
aim with coolness and precision, and shot Hamilton in 
the right side. Hamilton's pistol went off into the air 
as if involuntarily, and he fell upon his face mortally 
wounded. Burr fled ; his fainting victim was conveyed 
across the river by boat once more; and in the house of 
his second, after suffering great agony of mind and 
body, he expired the next day. 

Thus unhappily was flung away one of the most viva- 
cious spirits ever yet vouchsafed to this New World. 
Hamilton's soaring greatness, his energy, his fertility 
in resources, and the faults in combination with the vir- 
tues of his remarkable character, we have sought faith- 
fully to depict in the course of this narrative. As his 
views on political subjects were expressed plainly and 
frankly in writing on every emergency, exploring from 
top to bottom, so to speak, and as his writings have 
been published, only they need misunderstand Hamil- 



94 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ton at this day who rely upon the exaggerated phrase 
of contemporaries ; of those on the one hand who felt 
that the Union could not endure with him, and of those 
on the other who were assured that it could not last 
without him. No estimate, however, of Hamilton can 
be complete which fails to take into account the pre- 
cocity of his intellect and the almost juvenile stage of 
that career which was so illustrious under all discour- 
agements. This prodigy of executive ability; this 
Cassar of a commonplace world, which yielded, unfor- 
tunately for the scope of his powers, more to laws than 
to individuals ; this financier, whose feats with the pub- 
lic credit had astonished two continents; this imperial 
soul, which had dwelt in near companionship to Wash- 
ington; this statesman, who at thirty-five despised the 
subtle Jefferson, a man nearly fifty, who sought at the 
same time to bend that venerable oak, John Adams, who 
never doubted his own position among the wealthiest, 
the oldest in family influence, in a country upon which he 
had been cast, a waif ; this wonderful A.merican reached 
the zenith of his public influence when about thirty, and 
died at forty-seven. What might he not have accom- 
plished, it may be asked, had he lived to devote his 
riper years to his fellow-countrymen ? Not, we appre- 
hend, a new and more brilliant public career. For the 
more that political power passed to the American mass, 
the more surely was he cut off from participating in it. 
Hamilton was fitted to rule a decaying, but not to lead 
a rising republic. He was boldest in time of public dan- 
ger, and only despaired when all was peace and safety, 
so that personal prowess would be impossible. As 
Gouverneur Morris, his sympathetic friend and eulo- 
gist, felt compelled to admit, Hamilton was covetous of 
glory more than of wealth or power, and while con- 



DEATH OF HAMILTON 95 

scious that a monarchy in America was unattainable, 
so constantly and indiscreetly avowed his attachment 
to it, that he cut himself off from all chance of rising 
into office. And it is certain that to Washington's per- 
sonal friendship and protection he owed almost solely 
his political opportunities, the strongest partisans not 
daring to expose him to the test of the ballot. Among 
distinguished men the popular instinct rarely errs as to 
genuine friends, or rejects without a cause; calumnies 
manifold could not extinguish the popularity of a 
Washington or a Jay. Hamilton would have grown 
prudent ; but with his social, professional, and political 
friendships he was likely to pass into a confirmed pes- 
simist. Too frank to suppress his own convictions, too 
honorable to meanly court applause, he had likewise 
too much pride of intellect to acknowledge error. His 
ideal of distinction was irreconcilable with respect for 
the common sense and common dignity of mankind ; he 
asked little advice, trusting his untried pinions on the 
widest flight; and lovable, as doubtless he was, in his 
own circle, he was incapable of becoming in the broad 
sense a lover of the people. But supposing Hamilton's 
patriotism to have broken out in a new flame when our 
later troubles came with Europe, dissolving his British 
prepossessions, and restoring him and Madison to their 
youthful harmony, what glory might not have re- 
dounded to the American arms under such a com- 
mander ? Hamilton was, however, a scholar in his lei- 
sure hours, studious of the ancients, interested, too, in 
modern systems, observant of foreign precedents. 
Aside from his professional acquirements, which were 
enough to bring him fame and an ample competence, 
he might have become a philosopher, an expounder of 
comparative politics, an American Montesquieu. Tow- 



96 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ards such an investigation, in truth, his active mind, 
released from public responsibilities, had latterly 
turned. 

But an enemy's bullet stopped all opportunities for 
good or ill. Hamilton perished untimely ; a disbeliever 
in national dismemberment, but to the last a dreamer, 
a fatalist, lamenting a political system which seemed 
poisoned with democracy, and recognizing it as his 
paramount duty to maintain the code of honor in view 
of emergencies which might later arise. A grand im- 
pulse to our national system, with consolidation as the 
corrective of a confederacy; liberal national powers; 
protection, force, and energy in the central government ; 
financial stability, — these were Hamilton's great leg- 
acy to the American Union. 



Of all advisers Jefferson's most valuable were his 
two chief Secretaries ; both men of excellent parts and 
experience, believers in his fundamental policy and in 
the sincerity with which he pursued it, respecters of one 
another. A combination so felicitous at the head of 
affairs as that of Jefferson, Madison, and Gallatin has 
seldom been seen. The chief had the faculty of origi- 
nating, the enthusiastic temperament, the wide philan- 
thropy, the gift of managing men ; the others, who were 
less buoyant and magnetic, more conservative, more 
respectful of precedent and more distrustful, fitted ad- 
mirably their subordinate, yet exalted station, and 
checked Jefferson in the disposition to doctrinize and 
innovate. It is worthy of notice that two men, marked 
hitherto as leaders in legislative proceedings, quickly 
developed good business methods in their executive 
administration; and still further that, transferred to 



MADISON AND GALLATIN 97 

the cabinet in the prime of life, each devoted to the 
public a long future without ever entering a legislature 
again, or extending his fame as an orator. Madison, 
to be sure, held a department which the immediate Pres- 
ident was most competent to direct ; while Galiatin be- 
came a financier and specialist, whose functions, less 
capable of Presidential guidance, were, for the present 
term certainly, the most essential of all to the prosper- 
ity of a Republican administration whose prime con- 
cern it was to retrench expenditures, pay off the public 
debt, and collect a rising revenue. 

We are to picture the American Neckar at this time 
as a compact man of medium stature, with black hair, 
a bald head, dreamy, hazel eyes, dark complexion, and 
a countenance which indicated self-absorption, prudent 
calculation, reticence, and excessive caution ; Swiss, not 
French, in temperament; a wholly different personage, 
in truth, from the crack-brained zealot, whiskey insur- 
rectionist, and frog-eating foreigner, depicted by the 
imagination of those who had never beheld him. He 
was temperate in habits, somewhat shy, and the hardest 
worked man at the capital ; taking little recreation, nor 
knowing well how to enjoy it. Not equal to Hamilton 
as a financier to rear a system from the foundation, 
Gallatin was a much safer custodian of the purse when 
economies and husbandry were in order. Cold and re- 
served, as always, commanding respect in his party for 
talents, purity, and principle, but no longer conspicu- 
ous, if ever so, for a lawless intolerance of ills incurable, 
Gallatin felt in his new position the necessity of con- 
ciliating capital and those money centres where only 
conservatism can command. An exile of choice, patri- 
cian in birth, he felt the exile's isolation ; his heart ex- 
panded in the domestic circle, but that circle was a nar- 



98 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

row one; for the rest he found friends, and powerful 
ones, but not intimate, and such for the most part as 
watch sedulously the political barometer. Had preju- 
dice availed, as he once feared it would, to keep him out 
of Jefferson's cabinet, he intended moving to New York 
City and practising at the bar. As a cabinet officer, and 
one dependent upon his salary, he grew very nervous 
over the turmoil of factions in the great middle State 
and section he represented, and, unlike the President, 
would have temporized with Burr and held the rod over 
Duane. Not a false friend, Gallatin kept too much 
guard over his heart to be a firm one ; and hence, among 
rivals and adversaries, of whom every politician finds 
plenty, he would most likely have stumbled except for 
Jefferson, whose confidence was implicit and at the 
same time generous. 



Fixing the boundaries of the various Indian tribes, 
as well as of the great territories themselves, occupied 
more seriously than before the national attention. It 
was the President's wish to reclaim these children of 
nature from the savage state ; leading them, if possible, 
to abandon the chase, devote themselves to civilized 
pursuits, and settle in fixed habitations. Spinning and 
weaving might, he thought, be profitably introduced 
among them, also the tillage of small farms; and thus 
would they become more disposed to part with the 
large tracts, which to them had been mere hunting 
grounds, besides gradually fitting themselves to become 
citizens of the United States. "In truth," he wrote in 
1803, "the ultimate point of rest and happiness for 
them is to let our settlements and theirs meet and blend 
together, to intermix and become one people. Incor- 



TERRITORIES AND THE INDIANS 99 

porating themselves with us as citizens of the United 
States, this is what the natural progress of things will, 
of course, bring on, and it will be better to promote 
than to retard it. ; ' 



We may here recall some of the homelier traits of 
Jefferson's administration, which, on the whole, en- 
hanced his popularity, while constantly widening the 
chasm between him and political precisians of the old 
school. 

The old school and the Old World laid great stress 
upon official dignity, and the use of ceremonial forms ; 
these they thought essential for fostering the spirit of 
allegiance, which is akin to reverence, and requires a 
shrine. But Jefferson stripped government as much as 
possible of all false externals and led from idols to the 
ideal of a progressive society, ruled by common consent 
as the majority might determine, and obeying its best 
impulses. In that general progressiveness to the high- 
est good, he saw a study for history far worthier than 
in the strut and stride of potentates who borrow false 
illusions from the glare of a court life to make its am- 
bitions seem unduly glorious. Things trivial of them- 
selves bent, and sometimes ludicrously, to this standard 
of philosophy. First of all, the new President abol- 
ished levees and courtly drawing-rooms, nor would he 
suffer society at the capital to inflict such entertain- 
ments upon him for its own amusement. Departing 
still further from the example of the two previous ad- 
ministrations, he refused to have his birthday known 
or celebrated. On two days of the year, New Year's 
and the Fourth of July, the doors of the White House 
were kept open; the former occasion, which was the 

fLofC. 



ioo EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

more suitable for the latitude of our permanent capi- 
tal, remaining ever since its chief festal day. He lived 
in one corner of the unfinished White House, then 
known as the "Palace," plain in his manners, always 
accessible to those who called. He gave official din- 
ners in excellent style, entertaining public characters 
after the usual custom, but heedless of nice questions 
of precedence in seating his guests, and disposed to 
adopt what was known as the "pell-mell" arrange- 
ment. In dress he was careless, often slipshod, like 
one engrossed in other matters; combining, too, the 
fashions of an old and new era, as might suit his own 
passing fancy. For with all his zeal as a reformer at 
this late time of life, Jefferson showed habits, tastes, 
and general methods savoring of that eighteenth cen- 
tury conservatism to which he had been educated ; and 
his personality was that of one who introduced, rather 
than embodied, our modern America, and modern 
politics. 

The rustic seclusion of the new capital made it, of 
course, the easier for Jefferson to indulge in what 
might now be thought a freakish subversion of common 
forms; besides which he was a widower. When his 
married daughters visited him, he enjoyed sitting on 
the floor and playing with his grandchildren. Avoid- 
ing, too, upon principle, all grand tours and proces- 
sions, and travelling modestly between the Potomac 
and Monticello in the seasons of recess, he breathed 
constantly a social atmosphere redolent of home and 
old friends, while his fame went far and wide with- 
out him. 

Captivating manners, wide information, and quick 
sympathy with humankind — a book which he fully 
mastered — assured Jefferson against contempt. On all 



JEFFERSON AT THE WHITE HOUSE 101 

scientific subjects he talked remarkably well for an 
amateur; geography and natural philosophy were 
among his favorite studies. His general scholarship 
was remarkable for his times, and when a subject occu- 
pied his thoughts he investigated deeply. Discursive 
in conversation, with a tendency to paradox, he im- 
parted striking suggestions, and often enthusiasm. He 
corresponded well with the eminent savants of both 
continents. At his table he appeared easy and good- 
tempered, watchful of the moods of his guests, and 
taking care that the name of none should escape him. 
Not vulgar, nor with a mind which worked only in 
political grooves, he well maintained, after his peculiar 
fashion, the dignity of the Presidential office. 

The fastidious of Jefferson's time thought the New 
Year's reception a Saturnalia. Odd figures and odd 
dresses were to be seen in the windows and on the grand 
staircase; the footpaths of the Presidential grounds 
were thronged ; President's Square was crowded by two 
o'clock with a crowd of spectators, white and black. 
The Marine and Italian bands played for the general 
entertainment. Wine, punch, and more delicate re- 
freshments were provided for the guests, who arrived 
some on foot and some in carriages, all helter-skelter. 
The President stood at the head of the reception-room 
with his cabinet, his figure slender, more than six feet 
high, his step elastic, his reddish hair turning from 
sandy to gray ; frank and affable in speech, and yet self- 
possessed; now friendly, now courteous, according to 
the person he addressed, whom he generally seemed to 
know by name; simplicity the great charm of his man- 
ner. Among the diplomatic corps appeared singular 
contrasts : the French Minister was decked in gold lace ; 
the Tunis ambassador, who conversed in Italian, wore 



102 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

his silk slippers, turban, and a robe displaying his scar- 
let jacket beneath, which was embroidered with buttons 
of precious stones. A train of Indian warriors would 
sometimes join the throng bedecked in war finery, with 
blankets and deer-skin moccasins, feathers on their 
head, and silver pendants from the nose and ears. 

With this wholesale hospitality, state dinners, and 
the constant demands upon his private fortune, Jeffer- 
son retired from the Presidency a poor man, and suf- 
fered painful embarrassments in his last years through 
the guests who swarmed at his tables. In personal 
habits, nevertheless, he was far from extravagant; 
eating sparingly at the table and avoiding stimulating 
liquors. He kept a French cook and liked French 
dishes; a peculiarity for those days which had caused 
Patrick Henry to denounce him on the stump as one 
who "abjured his native victuals." When first chosen 
President he is said to have arranged for purchasing 
a coach and four; but no such equipage seems to have 
appeared conspicuously, and a favorite steed bore him 
on most excursions, private or official, during his term 
of office. He rode splendidly, though a civilian; he 
had always been fond of horses ; and his robust health 
he attributed largely to horseback exercise, which he 
pursued regularly to almost the last day of his long 
life. 

Jefferson did not improve much upon Washington 
and Adams as to remaining at the seat of government 
in midsummer. "Grumble who will," he said, "I will 
never pass those months on the tide-water." But Mon- 
ticello was at a moderate distance, and the public busi- 
ness was running smoothly. Nor did Madison live far 
away in vacation. Respectful addresses from legisla- 
tures and corporate bodies received, of course, the 



JEFFERSON AT THE WHITE HOUSE 103 

attention of our third President as formerly ; and com- 
mon delegations began to come, besides, with their 
homely expressions of good-will. He carefully avoid- 
ed gift-taking, as well as nepotism; presents were 
refused, excepting a bust from the Emperor of Russia. 



CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF THOMAS JEFFERSON. 

§ I. Period of Ninth Congress. March 4, 1805-March 3, 1807.— 
§ II. Period of Tenth Congress. March 4, 1807-March 3, 
1809. 

IMPRESSMENT, which now became and con- 
tinued the standing grievance against Great 
Britain, was an indignity to which no self-re- 
specting nation could patiently submit. Loss of prop- 
erty will long be borne, but the unatoned outrage upon 
the person of a citizen provokes instant retaliation and 
war. Nevertheless the United States had shown great 
forbearance on this subject, and ever since 1790 had 
sought by fruitless negotiation to rectify the mischief. 
The fundamental right which England claimed was 
that of using her own citizens by arbitrary seizure to 
fight her maritime battles ; and once a citizen always a 
citizen. At first her pretension of reclaiming citizens, 
once in allegiance, appears to have been confined to 
British seamen who had deserted from some ship and 
entered the American service. Gradually, however, it 
extended farther, all British subjects being claimed and 
seized, whether deserters or otherwise. And yet, in 
face of their own principles, the British ministry would 
refuse to discharge an American seaman settled or mar- 
ried in England, or one who had voluntarily entered 



BRITISH IMPRESSMENTS 105 

the British service. By right of the American Revolu- 
tion our citizens, formerly British, had acquired un- 
questionably as of right an independent American alle- 
giance. 

But it was not the real or pretended right to impress 
British subjects, so much as the means of enforcing that 
right, to which the United States took chief exception. 
So far as this government was concerned, arrangements 
would not have been difficult for the mutual surrender 
of deserters upon a reciprocal obligation to observe 
good faith. But Great Britain consented to no such 
arrangement. She made no demand for her deserting 
seamen. On the contrary, she used force, and exercised 
a discretion of her own, which, utterly ignoring the 
co-sovereignty of the parties, led of necessity to the 
greatest abuse. British naval officers would stop and 
overhaul an American merchantman, muster its pas- 
sengers and sailors on deck, and carry off forcibly all 
whom it might suit their convenience to claim as Brit- 
ish subjects. This was done not in British ports alone, 
but in those of neutrals and upon the high seas. The 
interested party and the stronger one was judge of his 
own cause. Sailors were wanted, and the British press- 
gang laid the universe under contribution. Hence did 
the abuse of the impressment principle far outrun 
the principle itself. Thousands of American natives 
were taken in the pretended exercise of a British right 
of search ; foreigners, too, whose language and personal 
appearance showed distinctly that they were not Brit- 
ons. Meantime the remedy, in case of mistaken seiz- 
ure, was slow and by no means adequate, nor was 
recompense or indemnity afforded for it. The com- 
merce of the United States was injured by the actual 
loss of American seamen and by the dread which kept 



io6 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

others from exposing themselves to the peril of capture 
for bloody work upon an English frigate. 



The conspiracy of Burr now flamed suddenly in the 
sky like some comet, wholly unexpected, whose coming 
seems the presage of destruction. But when seen that 
conspiracy had ceased to be dangerous. The bearing 
of this enterprise upon our internal politics was very 
slight, except to strengthen public confidence in the 
energy of the Executive, and to cement to the Union, 
as was highly needful, the loyalty of our immense Mis- 
sissippi country. For the rest, we may regard it as a 
phenomenal exhibition of hazy native imperialism, 
quite unfit for modern America. 

Wilkinson turned against Burr at the critical mo- 
ment, and by his energetic preparations at New Orleans 
crushed the enterprise in which he had been promised 
the second place of command. 

It only remained for the Federal courts to deal with 
the offenders as they deserved, all other trials being 
postponed to that of the chief conspirator. But here 
the law shielded the prisoners. No conviction of trea- 
son was possible under our constitution unless some 
overt act could be proved on the testimony of two wit- 
nesses. Burr's trial at Richmond collapsed upon a rul- 
ing of Marshall, the Chief Justice, to the effect that 
the enlistment and assembling of men at Blennerhas- 
sett's Island showed no overt act of treason ; that even 
if it did, Burr's agency was not manifest ; and that the 
overt act must first be established before testimony of 
Burr's conduct or declarations elsewhere was admis- 
sible. Burr's second trial, which was for simple mis- 
demeanor, failed upon a point of jurisdiction; and 



BURR'S CONSPIRACY 107 

though Burr and Blennerhassett were afterward held 
for trial in the district of Ohio upon this less heinous 
charge, the government abandoned their cause, and the 
other indictments were dismissed. The chief recollec- 
tion of this famous prosecution is the forensic triumph 
achieved by one of the counsel on the government side, 
the eloquent William Wirt, whose fervid description 
of Blennerhassett' s island home — the ideal of a liter- 
ary retreat, such as through life haunted his own imagi- 
nation, — still retains a place among our oratorical ex- 
tracts. 

To Blennerhassett Burr was indeed the serpent 
invading Eden. A charming home was ruined, a lovely 
family scattered. Soldiers committed pillage; credi- 
tors attached the estate ; the dwelling, a quaint wooden 
house, with curved wings and a running piazza, was 
burned to the ground. Unsuccessful in speculations 
by which he hoped to repair his fortune, the outcast 
vainly sought public office in Canada, and afterwards 
in Ireland, and died at last on his native soil penniless 
and heart-broken. To thousands of travellers floating 
down the Ohio River past Marietta and this lonely 
island, the deserted rendezvous of treason, has the 
pathetic tale of poor Blennerhassett been made familiar. 

Nor, though released from legal durance, did the 
chief offender escape the Nemesis of public condemna- 
tion. Less an object of compassion than Blennerhas- 
sett, Burr wandered abroad a few years, living upon 
scanty remittances from personal friends; but in 181 2 
he returned stealthily to New York City, confirmed in 
sensual and impecunious habits, and there resided until 
his death. None of his former high acquaintances 
either molesting or greeting him, he slunk back into 
professional practice, confined for the rest of his life, 



108 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

with all his astuteness, to the grade of a pettifogger. 
His only child, to whom he had promised a diadem, 
the beloved Theodosia, lost at sea, and his direct line 
extinct, Burr was left without an endearing tie in the 
world; yet a stoic still, through all the vicissitudes of 
life, he lived to the age of fourscore, the obscurity of 
his Bohemian existence varied only by the scandal of a 
marriage at seventy-eight to a rich widow, who soon 
after separated from him. Over the fair sex Burr's 
fascination was retained to the last ; one woman, strange 
to his illustrious kindred, nursed him in his final sick- 
ness, and another placed a simple block of marble to 
mark his unhonored grave. 



The historical act of this closing session of Congress 
(1806-7) was tnat which gave the African slave trade 
its quietus, our government thus availing itself of the 
right of constitutional prohibition upon the first per- 
mitted opportunity. Congress did much by shutting 
this outer door upon the slave trade ; but, unfortunately, 
inner doors were still left open. Upon the great na- 
tional error of this era regarding domestic slavery we 
have elsewhere dwelt : that the system already woven 
into the social fabric of the coast was permitted to be- 
come a pattern for the new interior States. Jefferson's 
accustomed prescience here failed him. Moved by the 
discontent which the French inhabitants of Orleans Ter- 
ritory manifested because of the present act, he thought 
it not unwise to let them receive slaves from the States ; 
for, as he argued, by thus dividing the evil we lessen 
its danger. The law of natural increase contradicts 
such a theory; and the danger, growing with this 
Union, consisted most of all in fostering the ambition 



SLAVE TRADE ABOLISHED 109 

of slaveholders to populate new States in their interest, 
and in allowing them to gain such an accession of 
wealth and power as to rivet their institution securely 
upon the broadening nation. 

Properly viewed, the abolition of the foreign slave 
trade meant to England the consummation of a humane 
national policy, but to the United States scarcely more 
than its initiation. On both sides of the ocean, how- 
ever, philanthropy now reposed upon its laurels; and 
with the abolition of the slave trade, a policy to which 
the United States, with Great Britain's co-operation, 
ever after adhered, which was favored presently by 
the commercial situation and in later years by more 
efficacious restraints, the first anti-slavery movement 
in America subsided. Of that movement the head- 
quarters were at Philadelphia, and Pennsylvania had 
been the chief agitating State in the Union. The last 
State convert to emancipation had now been made, and 
upon no remaining issue which the slave problem pre- 
sented in America could the general sentiment be 
strongly aroused or united. To limit slavery en- 
croachment upon the national domain was not in this 
era attempted. The drab coats and yearly meetings 
fix no longer the public gaze; in 1807 the abolition 
convention at Philadelphia resolved to hold only tri- 
ennial meetings in the future; and even those were 
presently discontinued as the societies died out which 
had supplied delegates. 



Looking back through the vista of years upon that 
terrible encounter of war which shook the whole civil- 
ized world, we cannot but admire England's steadfast 
courage in opposing the great conqueror and autocrat 



no EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

of the age. We see her beating him off from the ocean, 
and wheeling round the land in her solitary flight to 
spy out some spot on which she could alight to give 
battle; the talisman of royalty in her beak, and spell- 
bound, despairing sovereigns below. If not the world's 
last hope, the "fast-anchored isle" had, at all events, 
become the last bulwark of royal Europe, and but for 
British constancy the balance of power in the Old 
World would have been lost. The false glamour has 
now disappeared from the name of Napoleon. He was 
not the scourge of kings so much as the enemy of man- 
kind. As liberty's vicegerent he glittered only by the 
insignia of which he had robbed her temple; the glory 
of his arms redounded not to his countrymen, not to 
France, but to his own imperial gratification; he over- 
turned thrones, not like Attila in disdain of them, but 
in order that he might supplant legitimacy by illegiti- 
macy, and pile costly pomp upon pomp. Against this 
consummate warrior and organizer of oppression Eng- 
land stood bravely, when all else was ruin. Corrupt, 
greedy, unscrupulous of means, she pushed, neverthe- 
less, defiantly on. The younger Pitt himself, cold and 
haughty as he showed himself to America, and con- 
scientious blunderer in his management of foreign rela- 
tions, moves our compassion when we think of him 
crushed by Austerlitz, and dying of a broken heart, 
which refused to surrender. The iron of that character 
without its genius and virtue, but with a caustic humor 
which alleviated better the burdens of office, was in 
Canning, Pitt's disciple. But British antipathy to Na- 
poleon did not originate in Napoleon's usurpations; it 
commenced with the Revolution that gave him the op- 
portunities of greatness, with deep-seated national 
rivalries for which the Corsican could not be blamed. 



NAPOLEON AND GREAT BRITAIN in 

As First Citizen of France Bonaparte's claims were 
indisputable; but England had challenged them, de- 
testing French Republic and Empire alike. And hence 
the contest, ceasing and then recommencing with such 
violence that amity between the principals was impos- 
sible, affected America with peculiar sensations. We 
were a rock which each wished to hurl at the other, — 
a convenient missile, and no more. One principal was 
an old foe, the other a false friend; with neither's 
object had we really cause for active sympathy. Peace 
was our interest, and peace we sought sincerely. In 
pursuing one another, too, the contestants were like the 
genie and princess who practised magic; if one took 
the shape of a scorpion the other became a serpent, and 
woe to the spectator who advanced too near. The 
United States was bound by every instinct to stand 
aside from such a contention, to leave the dynasties of 
Europe to themselves, and maintain a just neutrality; 
to keep at once and forever detached from the politics 
and ambitions of the Old World. If forced from that 
position, reason and passion must have prompted a re- 
sistance on our part to that belligerent from whose 
inflictions we chiefly suffered. The measure of such 
resistance would naturally be the redress of our griev- 
ances, independently of such incidental advantage as 
the other belligerent might derive. Even the Euro- 
pean sovereignties which were swallowed into this mad 
vortex, in which they struggled for dear life, found 
themselves swirling about in combination and recom- 
bination, catching now at a French alliance, now at an 
English. Into that vortex it was not fit that this repub- 
lic should enter without the gravest necessity. 

This trilogy of successive neutral prohibitions — the 
Berlin Decree, the British Orders in Council, and the 



ii2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Milan Decree — must henceforth supply the situations 
which brought this country eventually upon the stage of 
the great European war. And the foreign policy of 
the United States for the next five years following the 
spring of 1807 turned upon the constant endeavor of 
this nation to make England or France, one or both, 
relax its unjust prohibitions, or else suffer the conse- 
quences of America's resentment. 



Embargo must be contemplated as an experiment, 
somewhat like that of amputating a limb in order to 
save the life. The patient recognizes well what he has 
lost, but not the loss which was prevented. In this 
grave and sudden emergency the question for the 
United States was not whether to avoid or make a sac- 
rifice, but whether one sacrifice might not be better 
borne, for the time being, than another. With belliger- 
ent decrees against us utterly reckless of our rights, 
diametrically opposed to one another, and universally 
operative, our neutral commerce must have been con- 
ducted between Scylla and Charybdis; if we carried 
for England, France would confiscate; if for France, 
England would confiscate. The one exacted tribute 
from us, like the Grand Turk, and insisted upon search ; 
the other punished by forfeiture if we permitted search 
or paid that tribute; trade with the British Isles was un- 
der the ban of France, trade with France and her allies 
under the ban of Great Britain. King George, to be 
sure, had the more formidable navy to enforce such 
decrees, but Napoleon's means of punishment for non- 
compliance were ample, now that the Continent was in 
his coils. Further commerce abroad at this juncture 
meant, therefore, a defiant assertion of neutral rights, or 



JEFFERSON'S EMBARGO 113 

else such submission to one adversary as would certainly 
provoke the active resentment of the other, and draw 
us unwillingly from our normal state of neutrality ; and, 
in either case, we risked the sacrifice of our commerce, 
together with the greater sacrifice of a war for which 
we were wholly unprepared. 

But, it was asked, and not without relevancy, why 
not leave American commerce to solve the difficulty for 
itself? Why not let merchants arm their vessels or 
otherwise encounter the perils at their own discretion ? 
To this the answer was, first, because a nation cannot 
safely or honorably commit the cause of all to the dis- 
cretion of a class; next, because this government's re- 
sponsibility to England and France, as well as to its 
own citizens, was not to be evaded for calamities which 
might occur should belligerent orders be disregarded 
and new penalties and new retaliations be invited ; and, 
once again, for the reason that our merchants who 
wished to be let alone were less likely to maintain 
American rights and honor than to shuffle American 
trade into the protection of Great Britain, and accept 
an issue with her enemies. Here, as before, would 
government risk an immediate embroilment and war; 
chance, instead of policy, determining which belligerent 
should be our foe. 

That zeal for one's country which we denominate 
patriotism, and which prompts the individual to sacri- 
fice in order that the state may be served, sinks too 
often in our present age into the heartless calculation 
of material advantages which government protection 
affords to the individual, as though this were all that 
the individual need concern himself about. Under 
Jefferson our American commerce, whose chief seat 
was New England and New York, had enjoyed seven 



ii 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

years of unparalleled prosperity; but affluence had in- 
creased its cupidity. It was now protuberant, bulky, 
a mistress instead of a handmaid; a just pride, and yet 
a constant source of anxiety. It dragged a young 
people after it into foreign difficulties, with which they 
were unprepared to cope. It required a navy larger 
than the sense of the nation would warrant, and fail- 
ing of this, got callous to British search and kidnap- 
ping, like a woman who seeks gain from some mascu- 
line profession while exposing herself to indignities 
from men. Neutral trade, moreover, from steering so 
long through the belligerent restrictions of Europe, had 
grown to be sly and cunning of late; finding subter- 
fuges, risking captures, using the neutral flag to cover 
forbidden property, and constantly setting the wit of 
the fox to elude the lion. Embargo, as a protective 
measure, was not easily drawn about the vessels of such 
a mercantile community. First, the law was evaded 
boldly, so as to carry on an illicit trade despite its risks ; 
next cautiously, so as to sell American ships to Britain 
and put American cargoes under the British flag. Em- 
bargo, in short, could only be maintained by force, and 
a forcible embargo for any considerable length of time 
meant rebellion at home for the sake of maintaining 
peace abroad. 

As a purely temporary measure embargo was a fair 
choice among difficulties, nor a choice, in the present 
instance, wholly unforeseen. It gave our people time 
for reflection; it kept our vessels and cargoes from 
spoliation, with only the present sacrifice of profitable 
employment and an early market. The owners of per- 
ishable commodities like bread-stuffs suffered, to be 
sure, more than those whose lumber, tobacco, or rice 
might be readily stored and preserved ; ships themselves 



JEFFERSON'S EMBARGO 115 

might rot, if long disused ; and yet, on the whole, such 
a stoppage of trade, if brief, affected with no great par- 
tiality all classes and sections of the country. An em- 
bargo had been laid in 1793, while Washington was 
President, under the inducement of Eastern Federalists, 
and with a similar reliance upon the Executive discre- 
tion. And the present embargo received the general 
approbation of State legislatures upon its first adop- 
tion; it united public sentiment as no other measure 
would have done. But embargo, rightly considered, 
was no more than a temporary detention. Jefferson 
himself conceded it to be the universal opinion that war 
would be preferable to the long continuance of such an 
inhibition. This, he thought, was our last card, short 
of war; and unless a European peace soon ensued, or 
one of the powers repealed its obnoxious decrees, em- 
bargo was worse than war. He thought the time gained 
by it important, and undertook, on the strength of such 
a measure, to procure a retraction from either France 
or England. Embargo must have a limit, and in his 
mind the last limit would be the reassembling of Con- 
gress, or, perhaps, the close of 1808. 

History must admit, that so far as embargo was used 
as a weapon for coercing Europe, it utterly disappointed 
expectation. The sacrifice required at home, in order 
to produce any positive impression abroad, proved of 
itself fatal in practice to the long endurance of any 
such experiment. If England bled, or France, under 
the operation, the United States bled faster. Jefferson 
miscalculated in supposing that the European struggle 
had nearly culminated, or that the nerveless Continen- 
tal powers could organize an armed neutrality to pro- 
tect substantially their own interests. Instead of a 
sinking, vacillating, debt-ridden England, he found a 



n6 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

stubborn England making capital of what it owed, its 
prodigious resources slowly uncoiling. He found a new 
ministry, hard as flint, with Parliament to brace it, 
bending with redoubled energies to the war, heedless 
of Liverpool remonstrances, marching the red-coats to 
break up meetings and suppress riots in Manchester 
and those other manufacturing towns where embargo 
and the Continental exclusion were most heavily felt. 
Next to making American commerce tributary to the 
British exchequer, the aim of those who framed the 
Orders in Council had been to drive it altogether from 
the ocean, so that British merchants might absorb the 
maritime trade once more to themselves. This latter 
alternative embargo directly favored. Our non-im- 
portation act, which had now gone into effect against 
Great Britain, made it still less an object for that coun- 
try to court a repeal of the embargo. By way, too, of 
partial offset to the loss of our market, a new one was 
opened to England by the outbreaks in Spain. And as 
if to exasperate us to the utmost, Orders in Council 
were repealed as to that nation, but not in favor of the 
United States. 

After all, in politics there are no positive maxims; 
or, rather, political maxims must yield to circum- 
stances, and to the common sense of each new exigency. 
That common sense must be, in fine, the conserving 
force under a constitutional mechanism so complicated 
as ours. The fundamentals in which American politi- 
cal parties differ remain a standing source of perplexity 
to monarchies; and yet of those differences, whether 
reason or prejudice guides, we all partake. In one re- 
spect, at least, the majority of 1809 proved wiser than 
that of 1799; less obstinate and imperious when public 
opinion was pronounced, they quickly abandoned the 



DOWNFALL OF EMBARGO 117 

untenable, and made the sacrifice of pride much lighter 
by making it in good season. 

The downfall of this forcible embargo we must at- 
tribute most of all to the panic which rebellious New 
England produced at Washington. "Eggs of sedition" 
was the angry epithet that Governor Lincoln bestowed 
upon the insubordinate town meetings of his own State. 
How the resolutions of those New England towns 
pelted and pattered upon the bewildered administration 
Jefferson never forgot. 



Notwithstanding the embargo convulsion, loving 
and respectful tributes flowed in upon Jefferson at this 
time from every quarter of the Union except the East- 
ern; from State legislatures, and from religious and 
political societies. These tributes he severally acknowl- 
edged; but his only farewell address was embodied in 
the opening message to Congress, which he meant for 
his valedictory, feigning himself already, after a suc- 
cessor's election, at the end of a term for which he 
declined to be further responsible; a fiction which, un- 
fortunately for the symmetry of our national system, 
no constitutional amendment has yet made a fact. 

Undoubtedly this winter's trial was the sorest of Jef- 
ferson's life. His experiment failed, and with it hopes 
of peace and development he had dearly cherished. He 
had sunk in public estimation as the wizard, long infal- 
lible, who fails palpably at length to perform the ex- 
pected miracle. Like the old Archbishop of Gil Bias, 
he was conscious and sensitive ; he loved applause, and 
applause had confirmed him in his opinions. He left 
the cares of office in March, weary, disappointed, thor- 
oughly glad to escape them. 



n8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

But Jefferson was too much of a philosopher to take 
this last little vicissitude long to heart, too closely 
bound to his successors not to influence them, and too 
deeply rooted in the hearts of the people not to regain 
popularity the moment there was chance for another 
Presidential comparison. Randolph once likened this 
second term to Pharaoh's lean kine, which swallowed 
the fat ones ; and yet, to correct the simile, it was nearly 
seven years of plenty to one of famine. But that year 
of famine was his last, and it is the final exit which 
gives glory to an administration, or denies it. In the 
five more years of misery which ensued, thousands 
learned to look back with fond regret upon the earlier 
prosperous era of peace and Jefferson ; and so, too, on- 
ward through the hard years of recuperation which fol- 
lowed the inflated prosperity of an exhausting though 
successful war. 



Spared for a long and healthful old age, in spite of 
increasing money anxieties — for he was not the least of 
personal sufferers by his own embargo policy — Jeffer- 
son aided the country and his successor, still, by his 
inspiration and counsel ; but the firm, yet delicate, touch 
of his leadership was missed through the years of storm 
and stress which now followed. We were soon to be 
carried inevitably into the most stupendous interna- 
tional contest, and the most embarrassing, that modern 
civilization ever saw. Embargo, as Jefferson himself 
intended it, would have been the precursor of a hostile 
resistance to tyrannous European decrees; his own 
party failed him, however, and the opportunity passed 
for carrying that stringent precautionary measure to 
such a point. Though posterity is far from doing him 



RETIREMENT OF JEFFERSON 119 

justice, in that singular experiment, it has struck away 
half the justification for the virulence of contemporary 
opponents, by conceding his thorough honesty of pur- 
pose. And with all the pecuniary pinch of distress that 
embargo occasioned, we were far better united, as a 
nation, in sentiment and resources, for immediate war 
and war preparations, than we found ourselves three 
years later. In shaping our course, as neutral between 
France and Great Britain, it was necessary that we 
should conform to new conditions, and shape and 
steer by the sequence of belligerent hostilities. It Was 
not vacillation so much, that a Republican adminstra- 
tion displayed in these difficult years, but rather a tack- 
ing about as the foreign winds shifted. Who will hold 
the helm to one point unswervingly, in so dread a crisis ? 
And what ruler of an American people can be seriously 
reproached, who, before plunging into the dread calami- 
ties of war, is disposed to cast about, to experiment, to 
test to the utmost the expedients of peace and philan- 
thropy ? 



On the pressing measures of the next sixteen years, 
and more especially through Madison's immediate 
Presidency, Jefferson, though in retirement, was a free 
and confidential counsellor. The relations, in fact, 
which bound together in perfect harmony Jefferson and 
Madison, through the last twenty-five years of public 
activity in their joint lives, is without a parallel in pop- 
ular government; so well fitted by differences of age, 
talent, experience, and temperament, was the one to 
direct and the other to follow gracefully; Jefferson 
with pen or voice tingeing each expression with the deep 
feeling which glowed within him; while Madison 



120 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

showed a sobriety of manner, with occasionally a sly 
and quiet humor, shrank from all personalities, and 
linked calm premises to conclusions, as though human 
passions would bend implicitly to reason. The one wel- 
comed, no doubt, the restraints of judicious counsel, 
and the other that invigoration which comes in glowing 
moments from prophetic and confident intuition. 

America's greatest civilian, for the rest of his life, — 
an honor which John Adams deserved to share with 
him more fully than his fellow-citizens cared to per- 
mit, — Jefferson in his final retirement corresponded 
with the greatest citizens of two hemispheres; and 
years after he had left official station Monticello, his 
home, was overrun with pilgrims, from the illustrious 
to the impertinent. In the latest years of his life he 
devoted himself earnestly to the work of higher educa- 
tion in his native State and neighborhood. The Uni- 
versity of Virginia, "the darling child" of Jefferson's 
old age, was the fruition of schemes early cherished; 
and in the epitaph which he drew up for his own monu- 
ment, "Father" of this University was the third of the 
great titles which he claimed from posterity. In that 
last and most solemn appeal for fame and recogni- 
tion, one may perceive that Jefferson's most enduring 
pride was not in political or party triumphs, nor in the 
honors of public station, nor even in that supreme of 
our political titles, President of the United States, but 
in the calmer authorship of great works for the general 
benefit of posterity and his fellow-men. 

It would be strange, indeed, if statesmen so intel- 
lectual and penetrating as the foremost among Jeffer- 
son's political adversaries should not have marked cor- 
rectly the chief blemishes of his character. Blemishes 
there doubtless were. As connected with our national 



CHARACTER OF JEFFERSON 121 

history and that of great political parties, however, he 
is set, like a box within a box, by the sequence of events, 
showing the worse exterior first. We see him a pessi- 
mist out of authority ; then an optimist in the plenitude 
of authority; pulling down the great in the former in- 
stance, in order that the humble might rise to their 
share of public influence, but in the latter mainly occu- 
pied with solving those benevolent human problems 
which the success of such a plan next forced upon him. 
Hence he seemed interested and pushing at one time, 
but singularly disinterested and high-minded at an- 
other. He had seen his political opportunity, organized 
his forces, and risen; but motive power consisted in 
the expansive force of the ideas with which he had put 
himself in sympathy, like that which sets a steam engine 
to work. While leader of a party on the aggressive, 
seeking the stronghold of power, Jefferson was wily, 
insinuating, supple, ready in resources, one who studied 
the weaknesses of opponents to profit by them, and who, 
in cultivating the common votes for his side, assidu- 
ously, but not meanly, displayed the art in which they 
were most deficient; in short, a man of management 
and persuasion. Over a patrician party he gave ple- 
beians an advantage at the polls, which no change of 
party names and issues has ever reversed. And though, 
as chief magistrate, giving himself unreservedly and 
with remarkable success to inspiring the widest confi- 
dence, so that Republicanism might stand for the whole 
American people, Jefferson was ever after cumbered by 
his own peculiar methods, which, tried upon the great 
European powers afterwards, resulted in the best dip- 
lomatic conquest and the worst diplomatic defeat of his 
eight years' administration. Jefferson's faults of char- 
acter : dissimulation, intrigue, adroit management, a cer- 



122 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tain art of drawing the chair from under a foe instead of 
striking him down, and a disposition to exonerate him- 
self from blame under all circumstances, and even 
though employing others to detract, the careful reader 
has already detected. In political methods he showed 
more of the French than the English school, — plausible 
and diplomatic, instead of curt and offensive. But he 
was sound in native faith ; sincere and attached with 
regard to all followers ; remarkably tolerant except tow- 
ards such as had provoked his revenge, and those he 
spared not on opportunity. His innermost wish was to 
be friends with all, friend of the people, and the love of 
popularity disposed him to temporize. He was an 
idealist, but enough of a statesman besides to under- 
stand that mankind are won more by facts than theo- 
ries. In general direction he never swerved ; he led by 
flights, drawing the multitude after him, not soaring 
as the lark above them. To such a statesman the best 
attainable for the times is the best; he errs with his age, 
but he advances it. 

Contemporaries charged Jefferson with being pusil- 
lanimous, and asserted that his talent was a knack of 
shunning danger. For assault and battery, for organ- 
izing brute force, for facing bullets, and trampling 
carelessly through carnage, this sensitive and sympa- 
thetic nature was doubtless ill adapted ; but as for the 
fibre of moral courage, the Declaration and '76 speak 
to all time. The man who challenged his king in youth, 
and risked with compatriots a traitor's doom, endured 
contumely through the political excitements of 1799 
without flinching. In the Barbary war, in the suppres- 
sion of Burr's conspiracy, in the assertion of American 
rights against foreign powers, — nay, in embargo itself, 
— he showed himself a strong Executive, constant and 



CHARACTER OF JEFFERSON 123 

firm. Yet we shall admit that for marshalling a nation 
in battle array Jefferson compared unfavorably with 
Washington, or even, perhaps, with Adams. He had 
not the military instinct. He could arouse but not lead 
to action. He clung to persuasion and philosophy. 
War leaders may carry discipline into the cabinet, but 
peace leaders find their philanthropy out of place in 
the camp. There is something pathetic in the tenacity 
with which Jefferson for years pursued his futile expe- 
dient of conquering without showing fight or warlike 
resources ; determined not to yield to foreign injustice, 
but ruined in private estate partly because of the course 
he took to withstand it. 



Jefferson's original character has most powerfully 
contributed in forming that of his country. Liberal 
education, liberal politics, liberal religion ; a free press ; 
America for Americans; faith in the simple arts of 
peace, in science and material progress, in popular rule, 
in honesty, in government economies ; no king, no caste, 
room for the oppressed of all climes ; hostility to monop- 
olies, the divorce of government from banks, from pet 
corporations, and from every form of paternalism ; for- 
eign friendship and intercourse without foreign alli- 
ances; the gradual propagation of republican ideas on 
this western hemisphere while gently forcing Europe 
out ; meagre force establishments, meagre preparations 
for war in time of peace, a leaning toward militia and 
State volunteers for defence in emergencies rather than 
dependence upon national troops and praetorian guards ; 
faith in the indefinite expansion of this Union and of 
the practice of self-government upon this continent : 
all this, though others inculcated some of these maxims 



i2 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

too, is Jeffersonism, — for Jefferson's inspiration 
propagated the faith, — and Jeffersonism is modern 
America.* The States as a reliance against central 
consolidation American experience approves; and only 
in the sentiment of nationality and stronger national 
establishments has the Union outgrown Jefferson, or 
rather the Jefferson of 1799. Jefferson had the en- 
thusiasm of the future, and knew how to communicate 
it. Ideas impress most forcibly through the individual 
who stands for them ; and in Jefferson was personified, 
for the first time, the American idea in its full and con- 
fident expression against prejudice, against timid con- 
servatism, against historical experience, the cherished 
traditions of Europe, the French Revolution, and the 
armed potentates of the world. 

Jefferson, therefore, though no warrior, had the 
highest essentials of a philosophic statesman, — lofty 
conviction, earnestness of conviction, endurance of con- 
viction, skill in impressing his conviction. The can- 
did, who differ from him, allow the broad philanthropy 
of his policy ; they allow it in spite of visions and falla- 
cies, and although pacified Indians might raise the tom- 
ahawk once more or peacemakers shoulder the musket. 
He truly worked to deserve the good will of mankind 
by doing mankind good. Peace, not pride, was the 
fundamental of his system ; the less of government the 
better; live and let live; trust the good of man's nature 

* The germ of the "Monroe doctrine" of later development is 
thus early seen in Jefferson's corespondence, in view of the Span- 
ish uprising against Bonaparte, and its possible effects upon Cuba 
and Mexico, which he is well satisfied to leave in their present 
dependence. "We consider their interests and ours as the same, 
and that the object of both must be to exclude all European 
influence in this hemisphere." Jefferson's Works, October 29, 
1808. 



CHARACTER OF JEFFERSON 125 

rather than repress the evil; give the freest possible 
impulse to the bounding spirit of liberty, and confide in 
popular tendencies, as at least the most likely to be 
honest. 

One striking trait in Jefferson was his serenity of 
temper. He believed little could be gained by angry 
discussion. He was no orator; he seldom committed 
himself passionately to paper, though always feelingly ; 
but in conversation and personal intercourse his good 
humor was contagious. He would turn from politics 
to science and the crops, and while perplexed to the 
utmost in the embargo summer of 1808 he was corre- 
sponding with his friends upon the beauties of the 
French metrical system. "I have never," he truly said, 
"suffered political opinion to affect my private friend- 
ships; some have deserted me on this account, but I 
do not desert others." 

To confirm this last remark two memorable instances 
are in point, which, dating near Jefferson's retirement 
from office, may here be mentioned. The impetuous 
but chivalric Monroe, who had been distanced for the 
Presidency by a neighbor and fellow-Virginian, less 
popular, perhaps, but more deserving, betrayed for the 
moment anger, not with the latter alone, but with their 
common chief; but Jefferson, who might well have re- 
buked, soothed him like an affectionate father, per- 
suading him of his own firm friendship, and thus grad- 
ually brought about that full concert and reconciliation 
between Monroe and Madison which became so auspi- 
cious to the nation and to the permanent welfare of 
each. And once again, by laying hold of opportuni- 
ties, while in and out of office, Jefferson rescued the 
perishing fellowship of his life-long friend, John 
Adams ; so that the country long enjoyed the glad spec- 



126 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tacle of their two surviving ex-Presidents and Revolu- 
tionary sages united in brotherly ties and in the 
substantial support of their next successor's policy 
throughout a most perilous national era. An intimacy 
of great and patriotic souls more touching was never 
seen. Hand in hand these gray-haired sires of '76 went 
down the declivity of life together, discoursing as they 
grew old of things past and to come, this world and the 
next ; and through those dread gates which never swing 
backward they passed out into broad eternity, lit, as 
they vanished, by the rays of the same independence 
sun. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE UNITED STATES OE AMERICA IN 1809. 

NEVER in modern times had government come 
to exert such positive influence with so little 
of coercion as in this republic of the United 
States during the latter part of Jefferson's administra- 
tion, and immediately preceding the Embargo. Those 
are happy years to look back upon, happiest perhaps 
in the educational aspect they afford and in a con- 
scious broadening of the national spirit. A parting 
radiance, indeed, lingers about this second administra- 
tion of Jefferson, to be remembered like that of the last 
sunset before a storm at sea ; it was a miniature golden 
age of American history. 

What, Europe might have asked, was this ambitious 
young neutral across the seas, confident through inex- 
perience, which had so boldly seized the carrying 
trade and now demanded the right to prosper by it, en- 
forcing its argument with neither bribes and obeisance 
on the one hand, nor fleets and armies on the other, 
but as if to persuade the jealous to be just ? To answer 
such an inquiry, let us suspend our historical narrative 
for a single chapter. 



The uniform tendency of political government in 
these United States has been that the legislature ab- 
sorbs the chief functions, and encroaches upon the 



128 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

other departments. Corruption and fitfulness are the 
great dangers to which an American legislature is ex- 
posed; its organized capacity for good or evil makes 
individuals ambitious to control it for their private 
ends; and hence, fittingly, the constitutional require- 
ment in all the States at this early period, except Ver- 
mont, that the legislature should consist of two houses ; 
a provision which, to Pennsylvania and Georgia, was 
the fruit of experience, and which Vermont likewise 
adopted after a time. But as between these two houses 
no such solid basis of distinction could be contrived 
as gave symmetry to the British Parliament and the 
American Congress. They who sought to make the 
smaller house represent aristocracy, land, or wealth, 
found the idea too unpopular to prevail long; and, ac- 
cordingly, our State legislature, with its two branches, 
now stood for little more than a double friction upon 
law-making, the component of popular constituencies, 
one larger, the other smaller, with, perhaps, a difference 
in modes of choice or the length of the term of mem- 
bership. A few local attempts were not wanting to 
base the Senate apportionment according to the yield 
of taxation, and the House according to numbers. The 
New England plan of electing senators by counties, and 
representatives by towns, at this time prevalent, made, 
perhaps, the soundest distinction practicable; but even 
that distinction has since been generally abandoned. 

As for the right of popular suffrage in the choice of 
executive or legislature, this had by no means been 
freely conceded in America as early as 1809; while the 
fundamental idea of the Federal Constitution was to 
abide by the discretion of the several States in this 
respect so far as national elections were concerned. 
They who claim that "taxation without representation" 



STATE CONSTITUTIONS 129 

was the political wrong of the mother country against 
which the American Colonies rebelled, are in error if 
by this they intend that an individual or thoroughly 
popular representation was sought in Parliament, and 
not rather the representation of colonies or whole com- 
munities by some convenient sort of delegation. Unless 
Massachusetts as a colony was represented in laying 
the tax, Massachusetts as a colony ought not to be 
taxed ; but that no one in Massachusetts should be taxed 
unless he had a voice in electing such a representative 
would have been thought an absurd claim in 1775. 
Rather, perhaps, should it be said that these colonies 
claimed the exclusive right of levying their own local 
taxes through their own local legislatures. The essen- 
tial principle of deputy representation, however, such 
as prevailed in our own Continental Congress, and was 
claimed from Parliament as a fundamental right of 
British colonists liable to taxation, is as old at least as 
the Amphictyonic Council; whereas popular represen- 
tation, or that conferred by poll suffrage, is wholly 
modern, and to this day finds certain limitations im- 
posed of sex, age, and condition. State legislatures 
chose their annual deputies to the Continental Con- 
gress ; the Continental Congress made requisitions upon 
the State, and apportioned the several contributions. 
Much farther removed from universal suffrage and 
mathematical representation, we may furthermore well 
conceive, was the first quarter of this century than the 
fourth. As for Great Britain at this time, none of whose 
colonies could ever be regarded as on a par with the 
home population, rotten boroughs ruled the House of 
Commons. The French legislative corps was but an 
emperor's echo, like the senate of the Caesars. Our 
American States had, perhaps, the purest representa- 



i 3 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tive systems in the world, both in theory and practice ; 
and yet poll suffrage, a democratic idea, was coming 
very slowly into favor; the older constitutions con- 
ferred the franchise on property alone, many of them 
adhering furthermore to the British idea that only 
landholders should vote. In South Carolina a peculiar 
arrangement of election districts gave the wealthy and 
aristocratic the decided preponderance; in scarcely 
more than one-third of the States, and these chiefly the 
new ones, all agricultural in interests, had the property 
qualification been so far sunk that manhood suffrage 
really prevailed; though in that direction, no doubt, 
was the sweep of the general current. 



Two salutary constraints upon legislative tyranny 
under this American system were the veto power and 
the limitations of a written constitution. By means 
of the former, an executive, State or National, could 
defeat any new law upon which two-thirds of both 
houses (or, under some State charters, a majority in 
each house of all the members elected), failed to unite 
against him ; under the latter the proper court of appeal 
might thwart by the machinery of justice any act which 
contravened in its solemn opinion the body of funda- 
mental law. Political controversies and infringements, 
State and Federal, might hence cause courts of differ- 
ing jurisdictions to collide with legislature or Con- 
gress or with one another; but should blind judges 
encroach thus upon popular liberty, these were likely 
to suffer in the end, so resolute was the popular will. 
Strange and abstruse as all these constitutional inqui- 
ries might seem to a British barrister, whose Parliament, 
it was said, could do anything except to make a woman 



STATE BILLS OF RIGHTS 131 

a man, or a man a woman, the British courts, favored 
by the greater ponderosity of legislative machinery, by 
their own independence, and the general respect Eng- 
lishmen entertain for unwritten law, built up a juris- 
prudence of precedents in this era more boldly than 
could have been possible under the American system, 
where all power was subdivided and the public vigilance 
incessant. For American courts expounded statutes 
and considered their constitutionality, from a State or 
a Federal point of view, while British courts moulded 
national statutes by construing them at pleasure. 



Our State constitutions, republican in form and es- 
sence, breathed humane sentiments, expressed in the so- 
called Bill of Rights, which made a feature of each fun- 
damental charter from the days of the Revolution. 
Whether the language were always adequate or not, 
the ideas thus inculcated have crystallized into an Amer- 
ican creed; the Federal Constitution with its earlier 
amendments copying from the older States, the 
younger States copying from both; and some of the 
phrases originating in the British Bill of Rights of 
1689. Freedom of the press was enjoined; freedom 
of religion, freedom of the person, immunity from arbi- 
trary search and arrest, the sanctity of trial by jury; 
excessive bail was prohibited, all punishments dispro- 
portioned to the offence, standing armies, bribery, 
hereditary and perhaps double offices, titles of nobility, 
civil pensions, confiscations and penalties entailed upon 
innocent offspring. States differed, however, in some 
of the lesser details. The Roman idea of censorship 
and the Jewish of a seventh year of jubilee, might 
be traced in some of our local charters, notably that of 



132 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Vermont, which favored the plan of revising the State 
constitution every seven years ; but the later rule in the 
States conforms more closely to that of the Federal 
Constitution, so as to permit rather of special constitu- 
tional amendments or a constitutional convention 
whenever it may seem desirable to alter the fundamen- 
tal law. 

Freedom of the individual, a gift which the most 
polished nations of antiquity failed to confer upon 
their citizens, and which in the highest type only a 
spirit of Christianity supplies, was the essential spirit 
of the American constitutions. The Grecian and Ro- 
man citizen lived for the State, the American State 
lives for the citizen. 



By far the greatest interest of these United States 
in 1809, with respect to the number of inhabitants en- 
gaged, was the agricultural; a circumstance which 
doubtless enhanced Jefferson's popularity, when others 
assailed him as an enemy of commerce for agriculture's 
sake. Our chief exports were agricultural, according 
to the best estimates ; while as concerned the necessaries 
of life the American people were essentially self-sup- 
porting. Cotton, so insignificant a product in 1791, 
was king already, while the world's market stood open; 
the crop exported in 1810 being worth over $15,000,- 
000, and South Carolina finding this her most valuable 
export. 

The manufacturing industries of the United 
States had steadily grown, and so far as the imperfect 
statistics of the period are trustworthy we may reckon 
the manufactures of wood and leather as the most ade- 
quate of all, at this time, to domestic consumption. 



AMERICAN INDUSTRIES 133 

These, however, were exceeded presently in value by 
manufactures of cotton and wool, which received an 
immense stimulus by those disturbances which about 
this time checked their British importation. Iron man- 
ufactures constituted the next great industry in impor- 
tance after these others. Of wood and leather manu- 
factures our imports had become less valuable than the 
exports; carriages, household furniture, and the great 
item of ship-building being included under the former 
head. The history of American cotton culture and of 
the cotton-mills is deeply interwoven with the Ameri- 
can politics of this nineteenth century. Its narrative 
commences somewhat farther back and almost simulta- 
neously with that of our constitutional Union. 

American commerce, as our narrative has shown, 
rose to such prosperity during the European war as to 
have excited already the jealousy of the contending 
powers, whose restrictions Congress had to meet by cor- 
responding measures of retaliation, which led ulti- 
mately to war with Great Britain. New England was, 
of course, the great maritime section; more than one- 
third of the entire tonnage of the Union belonged to 
Massachusetts alone; and in Boston, the chief empo- 
rium of commerce, signs of luxury appeared already 
in an increasing taste for comfort and the fine arts. 
New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore were busy 
seaports. Of the coasting trade New England's share 
was large; and the toilsome sons of Nantucket and 
Marblehead, foremost in the ocean fisheries, caught cod 
off the Grand Bank or pursued the shy whale to distant 
oceans. 

The whale fishery was a sort of speculation; and in 
view of French and British decrees against neutral 
trade, our whole foreign trade by the seas was 



134 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

taking on the same hue. Great ventures, great 
risks, for the sake of great profits, is in fact 
the national American tendency in business as com- 
pared with the colonial; so sanguine is the American 
temperament under its liberal conditions of life and 
so eager are all to get rich quickly and rise in the world. 
Upon this vulgar development, landed capitalists of the 
Washington and Jefferson type, who clung to old- 
fashioned integrity and simplicity of manners, and had 
been brought up as easy farmers, looked with mingled 
disdain and alarm. The funding system first plunged 
our people in extensive speculations, which shook all 
the chief centres of population; but the land mania 
afterwards produced still greater convulsions. The 
feverish zeal with which waste tracts were bought and 
sold in the United States towards the close of the 
eighteenth century seemed a strange spectacle to for- 
eigners; and ere this its worst symptoms had disap- 
peared through the modifications of government policy 
in transfers of the public domain, and the bitter lessons 
of personal experience. The manufacturing frenzy 
was next to come, as incidental, however, to the devel- 
opment of a vast legitimate enterprise, in which native 
capital became interested of necessity; and this broke 
out about 1810 in the Middle States, spreading west- 
ward to Ohio and Kentucky, and southward to Mary- 
land and Virginia. Solidly as New England and 
Pennsylvania manufacturers had supported one another 
during the period of our first Congress, in order that 
their moderate business might be protected, they had 
since drawn apart ; the commercial interest became de- 
cidedly paramount at the East, and latterly Massachu- 
setts appears to have allowed both Pennsylvania and 
New York to outdistance her, until, this European 



THE JEFFERSON ERA 



J3 



trade inevitably declining, her adventurous sons at 
length took the same infection, diverted their capital 
into the new channels, and made Massachusetts very 
speedily in some respects the most remarkable of manu- 
facturing States. When the leading Eastern interests 
thus changed, we shall find that Eastern politics 
changed also. 

The love of novelty and change is inseparable from 
such a government. A new custom is quickly stero- 
tvped into law before the old one has proved outworn. 
Men are prone to consider the latest the best; their 
own age superior to all preceding, and the constant 
tendency of all things to perfection ; truths by no means 
evident, if history teaches anything. On the contrary, 
the generation which gains in one point may lose in 
others. This Jefferson era, by no means the age of 
luxurious or material perfection, was a happy one, not- 
withstanding, in setting the high opportunities of acqui- 
sition before all ; and the American people were blessed 
at this age in reaching out towards the golden mean 
of prosperity while stimulated to still greater exertion. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MADISON. 

§ I. Period of Eleventh Congress. March 4, 1809-March 3, 181 1. 
— §11. Period of Twelfth Congress. March 4, 1811-March 
3, 1813. 

PARALYTIC and dastardly as the new foreign 
policy which Congress now dictated might ap- 
pear, it fitted the emergency of present events 
better, perhaps, than a bold one would have done. At 
home and throughout the United States it 
deepened the conviction that a Republican 
administration was sincerely impartial in sentiment as 
between the two belligerents, England and France. 
With all their inaptitude for war or ambitious enter- 
prise the Jefferson leaders certainly carried the hearts 
and hopes of the American people; they might trail 
the national standard, but it was in their sure keeping. 
Centralizers in theory, the Federalists, who still claimed 
the name of national statesmen, were growing to be dis- 
integrators in fact; for they clung too closely to tra- 
ditions and to the inexpansive Union of the Old Thir- 
teen. More positive, also, in pride of intellect, their ten- 
dency was now too much to non-resistance, or for re- 
sistance on England's side, to suit the temper of the 
times; for Americans evidently regarded England 
as the chief European aggressor, and only showed a 



REPUBLICAN PARTY TRUSTED 137 

better fighting spirit than fighting capacity. The Re- 
publican party, on the other hand, which, partly in self- 
defence, had begun by unduly exalting State rights, 
was now, through its closer and steadier sympathy with 
the nation's practical development, and by reason of the 
gradual decline of all European bias, acquiring the 
more decided national character. That party alone 
kept headway in the new States, and with the back- 
woods settlers, who furnished to fastidious statesmen 
of the old school and of States long since populated, 
the semblance of a Tartar population ; and whose utter 
want of affiliation with Federalism in return, gave posi- 
tive assurance that the old party could never rise to 
national predominance again. 



The repeal of our Non-intercourse Act had yet to 
produce its effect upon Europe; and, strange to say, 
when it became known, the ignoble statute of 18 10, by 
which Congress seemed to surrender neutral rights at 
discretion, accomplished, with reference to the belliger- 
ents, what firmer measures had sought in vain. Ceas- 
ing to balance justly between England and France, the 
neutral now dropped into the arms of the former, co- 
quettishly hinting that the latter might recall her. That 
hint was not lost upon the quick Napoleon. 

Madison and his Cabinet, knowing only the Cadore 
letter, accepted the French assurance in good faith, as 
they were justified in doing. For, at a certain point 
in public intercourse, either the word of a potentate 
must be taken as a pledge, or international law has no 
security at all. Any relief, moreover, from this aim- 
less and imbecile drift of foreign relations was to be 
welcomed. It remained, therefore, for Madison's gov- 



i 3 8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ernment to summon Great Britain to repeal her own 
edicts against neutral commerce within three months, 
as the act provided, or else to suffer non-intercourse to 
revive against her alone. Here was the turning-point 
in American relations. Our administration wanted no 
war, but to escape an intolerable dilemma, and have 
but one enemy at a time. But Napoleon's deceitful 
pretensions were less of a barrier to confidence than the 
blunt and contemptuous incivility of the British minis- 
try. No flattering ambiguities were furnished in that 
quarter. Neither the equal opportunities which the act 
of May offered, nor the imminent revival of our non- 
importation restraints under Bonaparte's protection, 
moved the Perceval Cabinet. They had made no inde- 
pendent offer to repeal injurious decrees. They did 
not thwart Napoleon's new designs by recalling Orders 
in Council, even with the reservation they might prop- 
erly have employed that his revocation of decrees should 
be honestly fulfilled ; a course of procedure which would 
have rescued England's honor and our own, and held 
the Emperor by a double pledge. They did not interro- 
gate for themselves whether the Cadore announcement, 
which appeared final and positive enough upon its face, 
so as to deprive Great Britain of plausible ground for 
maintaining longer the present neutral system, was a 
snare and delusion. But taunting the Emperor to the 
utmost, they assumed that before England need move 
a hair's-breadth the United States were bound to ex- 
tort a continuous performance of Napoleon's undertak- 
ing for some indefinite period ; all this in fundamental 
disregard of that legislation upon which the Emperor 
himself had relied, and by whose tenor a genuine revo- 
cation was the essential fact ; and, in a word, so as to 
require us to impeach Napoleon's veracity to his face, 



TWELFTH CONGRESS ASSEMBLES 139 

and confess that King George and not he could be 
trusted. 



Three days before the Tippecanoe battle was fought, 
whose tidings reached Washington early in December, 
the Twelfth Congress was seen assembling, l8lT 
in obedience to the President's proclamation, November ♦■ 
a month before the usual time. That proclamation 
was ominous of war, but still more so were the 
changes which the growing war sentiment of a year 
had wrought in the composition of that body. 

The most remarkable change of all was seen in the 
new tone of Republicanism in Congress and the new 
leadership of the party. As for the House, which fixed 
the public gaze more constantly, moderate, non-resis- 
tant Republicans had disappeared, and the war-hawks 
were now in the ascendant. Jefferson and peace were 
already reckoned with the past ; even Madison and Gal- 
latin might soon be transferred to the retired list. 
Young America now found expression in that popular 
body. States of later date than the Convention of 1787 
demanded war ; and ardent men, who were babes when 
the Revolution was fought, pushed boldly to the front 
and assumed command. 

That the House had passed out of the control of 
temporizers and the Old Thirteen was revealed on the 
first ballot for Speaker, when Henry Clay received 
75 votes against 38 for William W. Bibb, of Georgia, 
the peace candidate, and 3 scattering votes for Macon. 
"Who is Clay?'' asked the country, confusing the 
Speaker thus selected with a Virginia member of that 
name ; and the press responded that he was a new man, 
of talents and eloquence, quite popular, who appeared 



i 4 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

to preside impartially. So much for a three years' 
record at this epoch in the United States Senate, where 
owl-like seniority blinked down impetuous youth, until 
the young men now and presently appearing in the 
House became transferred thither, and made it at a 
later epoch the great arena of national debate. Henry 
Clay had served in the Senate in Burr's day for a short 
period, and then, returning after a long absence, in 
1810, to fill a vacancy, he had recently made himself 
conspicuous by espousing protective measures, and help- 
ing destroy the National Bank. He was one who, pro- 
duced amid adverse surroundings in an old State, 
gained richness of growth by being early transplanted ; 
a Virginian by birth, the son of a Baptist clergyman, 
and left an orphan and destitute in infancy. The bright 
mill-boy of the "Slashes" gained the first rudiments of 
learning from a rude district school, worked his way to 
the bar as a clerical drudge, and then, removing from 
Richmond to the new State of Kentucky, rose rapidly 
in fame as a criminal lawyer, and thence came naturally 
into public life on a broadening arena. Rashly confi- 
dent, perhaps, in youth, Clay had a capacious intellect, 
and learned greatly and gradually by experience; he 
combined, moreover, the generous honor of the Old 
Dominion with the Western dash and faith in a bound- 
less national development. The secret of his power lay, 
however, in the inherited gift of persuading others, in 
his mastery of the American heart, which he swayed 
while swaying with it : first, by his eloquence, full of 
bold imagery, whose vehemence shamed the timid and 
roused the vigorous ; next, by a skilful management of 
men with different proclivities, whom he drew together 
by a thrill of personal sympathy. It was an art that he 
constantly cultivated to remember faces he had once 



CLAY AND CALHOUN 141 

met, and recall each name. A free liver, he would play 
cards and sport far into the night, reading thus the 
hearts of his compeers, while statesmen abstemious and 
industrious, like the younger Adams, measured out 
their slumbers in order to be up with the morrow's 
sun and kindle the study fire. Clay's oratory may have 
burned out with the inspiring occasion; his legislative 
compromises may have poulticed more irritations than 
they healed; but as a representative of national ideas 
and national self-assertion against Europe, as states- 
man, legislator, negotiator, Clay now became for forty 
years a remarkable figure in American politics. His 
accession to the Speakership was of itself a conspicuous 
event. Feeble hesitancy lost its cling on current events. 
From the moment this tall, slender son of Kentucky, 
with long brown hair, blue and flashing eyes, large 
mouth, peaked nose, and shaved face, mounted the 
steps and took the gavel into his hand, Quincy and 
Randolph had a foeman worthy of them; this House 
of Congress the popular leader whom two Presidents 
had sought in vain; and the country a foreign 
policy the most spirited and inspiring, if not the 
wisest. 

It was Calhoun's response to Randolph which pro- 
duced the chief effect in debate, because of a striking 
contrast in the matter of his remarks and a persuasive 
and dignified manner of utterance. This grave and 
handsome youth showed in his maiden speech before 
Congress, when scarcely thirty, that mastery of subtle 
and captivating logic, that ingenuity in presenting 
statements and that generalizing disposition, which in- 
stated him in after years as the founder of a new polit- 
ical school. Here he laid it down as a fair principle 
of conduct, applicable to nations as to individuals, to 



i 4 2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

repel a first insult, and thus command the respect, if not 
the fear, of the assailant. War, should it ensue, was 
in the present case justifiable and necessary. "The 
extent, duration, and character of the injuries re- 
ceived," he continued, "the failure of those peaceable 
means heretofore resorted to for the redress of our 
wrongs, is my proof that it is necessary. Why should 
I mention the impressment of our seamen; depreda- 
tions on every branch of our commerce, including the 
direct export trade, continued for years, and made un- 
der laws which professedly undertake to regulate our 
trade with other nations; negotiation resorted to time 
after time till it became hopeless; the restrictive sys- 
tems persisted in to avoid war and in the vain expecta- 
tion of returning justice? The evil still grows, and in 
each succeeding year swells in extent and pretension 
beyond the preceding. The question, even in the opin- 
ion and admission of our opponents, is reduced to this 
single point: which shall we do, abandon or defend 
our own commercial and maritime rights and the per- 
sonal liberties of our citizens in exercising them? These 
rights are essentially attacked, and war is the only 
means of redress. The gentleman from Virginia has 
suggested none, unless we consider the whole of his 
speech as recommending patient and resigned submis- 
sion as the best remedy. Sir, which alternative this 
House ought to sustain is not for me to say. I hope 
the decision is made already by a higher authority than 
the voice of any man. It is not for the human tongue 
to instil the sense of independence and honor. This 
is the work of nature, — a generous nature that disdains 
tame submission to wrongs. This part of the subject 
is so imposing as to enforce silence even on the gentle- 



WAR PARTY IN CONGRESS 143 

man from Virginia. He dared not deny his country's 
wrongs or vindicate the conduct of her enemy." 



All things hurried now so rapidly to war that the 
President had either to lead or be left behind. Amiable 
though he was and a skilful tactician, and earnest, too, 
in dealing with these formidable difficulties which 
neither France nor England would make lighter, Madi- 
son had not the energy and decision requisite either for 
inspiring or sustaining the public at this grave crisis. 
The imperious majority in the House grew impatient 
while he vacillated. His Cabinet, on the whole, was 
more prudent than daring. 

The war party in Congress, with Clay at their head, 
and popular enthusiasm cheering them on, resolved to 
bring the Executive to the point. The time approached 
for nominating the next President in caucus. They 
laid the anti-British programme they had arranged be- 
fore Madison and his Cabinet. This programme con- 
templated a short embargo to be followed by war. It 
is related that Madison acceded to the plan, or rather 
pledged himself to recommend war, for the sake of se- 
curing his renomination at their hands, their threat be- 
ing that unless he did so they should drop him. But all 
that history can positively assert is that Madison pur- 
sued such a programme, step by step, and that no nomi- 
nating caucus was held until he had quite committed 
himself. Prudent as an administrator, pacific and just 
on general principles, conscious of our inadequate re- 
sources, and most of all distrusting Napoleon's good 
faith and resenting the failure of that belligerent war- 
rior to give the United States some explicit assurance 



i 4 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

which would have put Great Britain so clearly in the 
wrong, that we might confidently call upon her to repeal 
or fight, Madison had kept the contingency of war all 
the time in view, and was not disposed to take more 
than his share of responsibility to prevent it. 

"Rushing headlong into difficulties, with little calcu- 
lation of the means, and little concern for the conse- 
quences." This was the harshest censure to which the 
administration and Congress had justly exposed them- 
selves by embarking in the present contest against 
Great Britain. All other strictures made by the peace 
men of that day may be dismissed as unworthy of the 
rhetorical phrasing they employed. The United States 
may or may not have been duped into a war with Eng- 
land, but the provocation was strong, and war or dis- 
honorable submission was the only visible alternative 
which Britain had left us. Napoleon was but the 
finger-post in this business, — no ally whatever. War 
we chose with England because it was needful to choose 
one of the alternatives, and either choice bristled with 
objections. Peace and free commerce were desirable, 
but the two could not be had together. Modest retire- 
ment from the ocean or a war of commercial restraints, 
the peace men themselves would not submit to. Open 
and violent war, therefore, was undertaken; rashly, we 
cannot doubt, and over-confidently, and yet honestly, 
and, as events turned out, by no means disastrously to 
the national character. There could not be a war for 
our maritime and neutral rights without, in some sense, 
an offensive war. 

Want of sectional unanimity, however, was the first 
and almost a decisive obstacle to this contest. Pennsyl- 
vania, and the States south and west, earnestly sup- 
ported it, while New England, New York, New Jersey, 



WAR WITH GREAT BRITAIN 145 

and Delaware rather held back. The instinct of honor 
and self-preservation should unite citizens to arm for 
their country alike when once the resolve is taken. Not 
thus, however, was Federalism prepared to reason. 
Pride, prejudice, inflexibility of temper, bitterly disap- 
pointed ambition, the patriotism of State lines, held 
these Federal Catos together. Not disunionists, neces- 
sarily, such leaders seemed to prefer the worst calamity 
to the Union rather than they should turn out false 
prophets. 



After the war against England had fully begun, news 
arrived that the British ministry had decided to sus- 
pend the Orders in Council; but hostilities l8 , 3 . 
continued as before between the belligerents. J» nuar y- 
When Congress reassembled a debate arose in the 
House in consequence, and Quincy, of the opposition, 
bitterly arraigned the administration while opposing all 
further military outlay. 

In a speech, one of the most eloquent he ever made 
in his life, Henry Clay, the Speaker of the House, vin- 
dicated the Cabinet and administration party and justi- 
fied the existing war. Reviewing the inconsistencies of 
an opposition band whose voice was first for war and 
no restrictions while the administration sought peace, 
and next for peace and restrictions when the adminis- 
tration was for war, — of parasites throwing out the 
idea of French influence, "which is known to be false, 
and which ought to be met in one manner only, namely, 
by the lie direct," — Clay proceeded to consider the cir- 
cumstances under which the government had felt com- 
pelled to declare war, and the motives which still re- 
mained for pursuing it. The British repeal, or rather, 



146 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

suspension of Orders in Council coming so late, it does 
not follow that that which would, in the first instance, 
have prevented, would also terminate a war. "As to my- 
self," observed the speaker, "I have no hesitation in 
saying that I have always considered the impressment 
of American seamen as much the most serious aggres- 
sion." 

That which gave the Promethean fire to our war with 
Great Britain was not, history must admit, its first 
most prominent issue; and here Clay showed the pro- 
found statesman and orator by lighting with his logic 
the most moving cause of all, that which had been too 
long subordinated, and by stimulating the national 
pride and indignation against the foreign power which, 
in this respect, was, and always had been, America's 
sole aggressor. "If Great Britain," exclaimed Clay, 
"desires a mark by which she can know her own sub- 
jects, let her give them an ear mark. The colors that 
float from the masthead should be the credentials of our 
seamen." And with a thrilling pathos, of which this 
orator's words, apart from his action, can afford but a 
faint impression, he pictured the piteous condition of 
the American sailor who had fought his country's bat- 
tles, pining in the oppressor's prison, while his govern- 
ment pleaded excuses for leaving him there.* 

This eloquent speech revived the drooping spirits of 
the country. The war went on, and the needful war 
measures were pushed briskly forward. 

*Newspapers of the time record the wonderful effect produced 
on Clay's listeners by this pathetic description. The day was 
a cold one, but the audience left the Capitol with beating hearts. 
Niles's Register; Washington Intelligencer, etc. 



CHAPTER IX. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MADISON. 

§ I. Period of Thirteenth Congress. March 4, 1813-March 3, 
1815. — § II. Period of Fourteenth Congress. March 4, 1815- 
March 3, 1817. 

ASSEMBLING amid rumors of treason and the 
execration of all the country west of the Hud- 
son, its members watched by an army officer 
who had been conveniently stationed in the vicinity, the 
Hartford Convention, hardening into stone, preserves 
for all ages a sphinx-like mystery. 

The labors of this convention, whatever they were, 
ended with a report and resolutions, signed by the 
delegates present, and adopted on the day be- 
fore final adjournment. These were promul- D f^^ T 
gated without explanatory comment. Report Jan ^ T 5 Y5 ' 
and resolutions disappointed, doubtless, both 
citizens who had wished a new declaration of inde- 
pendence, and citizens who had feared it. Constitu- 
tional amendments were here proposed, which, not 
utterly objectionable under other circumstances, must 
have been deemed at this time an insult to those 
officially responsible for the national safety, and only 
admissible as a humiliation of the majority. It re- 
quires but little imagination to read, in report and 
resolutions, a menace to the Union in its hour of tribu- 
lation, a demand for the purse and sword, to which only 
a craven Congress could have yielded, and a threat of 
local armies which, with the avowed purpose of mutual 



148 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

aid, might in some not remote contingency be turned 
against foes American not less than British. 

Was this political strategy in order to teach the 
American nation to look up to Federalism as the bra- 
zen serpent, or was it New England's serious ultima- 
tum to her sister States? From whichever point it 
should be regarded, never did amiable, upright gentle- 
men of the bar fail more ignominiously as confidential 
advisers of a rebellion. An uprising of shipping mer- 
chants, clergy, and moneyed men, of the conservative 
forces of society against the aspiring, could scarcely 
have been heroic or popular; and the conventionists, 
moreover, had duly estimated neither the wariness of 
governments abroad, nor the reserved strength of our 
own. Before the Congress, now in session, had actu- 
ally resorted to a conscription, before new and burden- 
some taxes could be assessed or a national bank char- 
tered, and while the novel experiment of enrolling 
State volunteers promised all the troops immediately 
desired, the war-cloud suddenly parted. Massachu- 
setts and Connecticut had accepted the report of the 
Hartford Convention and made the measures thus pro- 
posed their own. Each State quickly dispatched com- 
missioners to Washington, accordingly, to make upon 
Congress the demand for a separate maintenance. 
Quickly, indeed, but too late. Those demands were 
never made; for before the State commissioners could 
reach the national capital, salutes were firing and the 
stars and stripes floated free. The vast area of our 
indivisible Union was becoming spangled by night with 
illuminations. Almost simultaneously came the good 
Pebruary news to Washington that Jackson had driven 
11-18. t fo e British from New Orleans, and that our 
commissioners abroad had concluded an honorable 



PEACE WITH VICTORY 149 

peace at Ghent on the 24th of December. Peace, wel- 
come peace, had returned; a peace welcomed in the 
arms of victory. 



All was exuberance of joy in the last weeks of this 
Congressional session. Debatable measures were laid 
aside, as the new aspect of affairs permitted. Military 
operations were declared suspended. All calls for addi- 
tional troops were countermanded ; the militia being dis- 
charged as speedily as possible, and the State volunteer 
act likewise repealed. Deferring Dallas's bank scheme, 
Congress provided for the immediate wants of the treas- 
ury by a temporary loan and a new issue of treasury 
notes. In token, moreover, of reconciliation and re- 
newed commerce, the offending remnants of our dis- 
crimination and non-intercourse system, now harmless 
enough, were cleared away by an act of final repeal. 
In the midst of this happy work the clock struck the 
hour for a dissolution of the Thirteenth Congress; 
whose members, almost bewildered by the sudden tran- 
sition from despair to delight, did not, however, dis- 
perse to their homes without recommending to the 
country a day of thanksgiving to Almighty God "for 
His great goodness manifested in restoring to these 
United States the blessing of peace." 



The last two years of Madison's administration, em- 
bracing the period of the Fourteenth Congress, possess 
little historical interest. A nation of strong vitality 
emerging from a wasteful war, seeks needful rest and 
recuperation; accounts are cast and adjusted; scaffold- 
ings and temporary props against danger are taken 



150 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

down and the house is put to rights, swept, and gar- 
nished; the old order changes, but not yet giving place 
to the new. Our first consciousness was that of com- 
plete emancipation, like that of a child reaching ma- 
jority. Neither French faction nor British faction 
could exist among this great people longer. The Amer- 
ican Union, henceforth a nation with peculiar interests 
and peculiar institutions, would pursue its independent 
course upon an independent responsibility, free from 
the control or interference of the Old World. Like 
passengers on an emigrant ship dropping down the 
channel, whose pilot has just left for shore, our people 
realized for the moment more keenly the severance of 
ties two centuries old, and of dependence as colonies 
upon Europe, hitherto almost habitual, than the new 
freedom of the deep and a new destiny. This consti- 
tutional Union had passed the outer light of early ex- 
periment. On the vanishing bank stood the great foun- 
ders, the revolutionary fathers, the Mentors, all who 
had hoped or feared for it. A new era was dawning. 
Those provincial thirteen, or that frugal confederacy 
of unwarlike States; who would ever imagine such a 
Union again? 

Madison, certainly, who saw the driftwood of old 
parties floating by, had no strong desire but to avoid 
dangers, and round his anxious administration and long 
public career to a happy close. To provide a national 
peace establishment and restore the disordered finances 
was his main solicitude. The Fourteenth Congress 
worked harmoniously with the Executive to the same 
end. 



The war of 1812 was fought under circumstances 



LESSONS OF THE WAR 151 

quite adverse to the United States, and adverse, most 
of all, in what human wisdom could hardly have fore- 
seen, the sudden and utter downfall and collapse of the 
Napoleon dynasty, because of an idiosyncrasy, — the 
blind fatalism of its founder. The season did not seem 
ill chosen at first ; but so quickly was the whole Euro- 
pean skein unravelled, that England's victorious arms 
were turned against America almost as soon as Ameri- 
can troops could fight in earnest. From an intended 
conquest of Canada, the war became a struggle to main- 
tain in its integrity the territory we already owned. 

This state of things, however, brought its own com- 
pensation. America owed no new debt of gratitude 
to France, and had incurred no responsibility whatever 
in the good or ill fortune of her misguided ruler. His 
Leipsic was not ours, nor his Austerlitz. Moreover, 
with Napoleon crushed and revolutionary France 
stretched prostrate, weary Europe sought repose. The 
war for maritime supremacy was over, with the vio- 
lence used to obtain it, and peace on the Continent of 
old institutions laid a rational foundation for the solid 
superstructure of peace between the United States and 
Great Britain. The American attitude at the period 
of the Vienna Congress assured for this country prac- 
tical advantages with Europe far beyond what the 
treaty of Ghent in terms professed to confer. 

We had resisted contumely and wrong ; we had nego- 
tiated, protested, and then had fought for free, unob- 
structed trade and sailors' rights. Fighting, we had 
humiliated on the ocean the proudest and, in that day, 
the most insolent naval power of the world. Precisely 
this was the guaranty of commerce and commercial 
respect that our young and rising nation needed, and 
the only one worth having at all ; for England respected 



1 52 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

courage above all things, and neutral commerce at her 
loss there could not have been so long as she could 
make the neutral her fag and subordinate. Hull, Bain- 
bridge, Decatur, Jones, and Perry negotiated, there- 
fore, the impressment difficulty better than all the sec- 
retaries and envoys since 1790; and of British invaders 
there was no longer a fear after Jackson's siege-guns 
had spoken at New Orleans. Under the treaty of 18 14, 
in short, the United States of America became com- 
pletely divested for the first time of the colonial attri- 
bute and solemnly divorced from Europe. 

The lessons of this war to the Old World and the 
New were worth all they cost ; which cost, at the most 
liberal calculation, — apart from the loss of human life 
incident to all wars, — consisted of a war debt easily 
paid off afterwards; of spoliation claims against a 
bankrupt emperor, whose liquidation neither frowns 
nor friendship were likely to have ever procured ; of the 
forced suspension of a foreign commerce fleeced on 
both sides of the Channel, and scarcely pursued at all 
except by violating the decrees of one power for the 
benefit of another. To sanguine Americans this war 
administered a wholesome corrective of excellent Jeffer- 
sonian maxims. It taught them that passion and self- 
aggrandizement, with nations as with individuals, may 
blunt the edge of honor ; that for international disputes 
a good argument is well sustained by a prudent display 
of warlike resources ; that while war should be the last 
resort of an aggrieved nation, wars prove costly when 
entered upon with inadequate preparation, can seldom 
accomplish the earliest expectation, and never are easily 
relinquished; that Americans should abate State pride 
and draw closer into the bonds of nationality, as the 
strongest safeguard against wars without and commo- 






MONROE CHOSEN PRESIDENT 153 

tions within, and yet trust the honor of the American 
name to the intelligent American people, confident of 
their means, their constancy, their patriotism, for pro- 
tecting it in a good cause against the mightiest foe on 
earth. For invasion this Union might fail, but for self- 
defence it was invincible. 



Monroe's election was hailed at the West, where, like 
Jefferson, he enjoyed immense popularity without hav- 
ing ever made its tour: and this was partly 

■ r 1 • • • r 1 1816-17. 

because of his agency in procuring for the 
Union a free Mississippi. Nor were Eastern men dis- 
pleased ; for even Anglo-Federalists remembered Mon- 
roe as negotiator of the British treaty which Jefferson 
had rejected. " Hartford Convention," and " Blue 
lights," were already words of reproach hard for them 
to bear. Harrison Gray Otis and his associates ten- 
dered the olive branch, desiring friendship with the 
incoming administration. An intimate friend of Mon- 
roe visited Boston in 181 6, and this set treated him with 
marked hospitality. They wished Monroe would jour- 
ney to New England and discover for himself how firm 
was the loyalty of that section. 

Monroe was not unimpressed by these overtures, 
but, nevertheless, reserved his decision. He agreed 
with Andrew Jackson, who had advised him in the 
course of a singular correspondence, divulged many 
years later, that the chief magistrate of the country 
ought not to be the head of a party, but of the nation. 
Those, thought the President-elect, who left the Fed- 
eral party during the war, were entitled to the highest 
confidence ; but towards Federalists with principles un- 
friendly to our system he felt differently. " The ad- 



154 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ministration," he wrote to Jackson, " ought to rest 
strongly upon the Republican party, indulging towards 
the other a spirit of moderation and discrimination ; we 
must prevent the reorganization and revival of the Fed- 
eral party." 

While Monroe thus forecast the future, Madison's 
sun sank calmly to its setting. This administration 
had been an eventful one, full of strange vicissitudes; 
but joy came at last, and long tribulation brought a 
welcome peace, more secure than America had known 
for seventy years. Madison, therefore, left public sta- 
tion with applause ; and the genuine esteem with which 
he was already regarded, after a long public career 
of unsullied honor, unswerving patriotism, and con- 
spicuous usefulness to his fellow-men, gradually deep- 
ened into affection, if not reverence. He outlived all 
his contemporaries of 1787, and all political enmities; 
and in the course of his long and happy retirement 
earned new claims to public gratitude by contributing 
much to the historical record of his illustrious times 
and assuaging the heat of new controversies. His 
homestead, approached through long avenues of noble 
trees, was Montpelier, a fine wheat farm, not far from 
the little town of Orange; and here, with his accom- 
plished wife, he lived quietly among neighbors of sim- 
ple manners like himself, Jefferson, his distinguished 
friend, being within half a day's ride. Faithful in all 
the relations of life, pure, upright, diligent, discreet, 
disinterested, benevolent, Madison possessed those 
traits to which old age always gives lustre. Well- 
deserving of the nation, he had attained all the honors 
the nation could bestow, and had done a remarkable 
filial service in return. His faults were those of a pru- 
dent rather than a zealous or daring executive; respon- 



MADISON'S CAREER CLOSES 155 

sibility rested uneasily upon his shoulders, for he had 
been bred a counsellor, and as President he could not 
stand firmly against opposition. His administration 
had been weakest where the pressure came upon execu- 
tive discretion, and strongest where its course was dic- 
tated by the popular wishes, of which Madison had 
always a delicate perception. Conscientious as he was 
docile and capable, even weakness like this could not 
ruin the public interests committed to him, for disci- 
pline brought correction; and though a President of 
accommodating opinions, perhaps, his opinions were 
accommodated, nevertheless, to the times. Madison 
could never go far wrong, for he never went counter 
to the sense of those he governed; but in the war of 
1812 he seemed less a preceptor and guide than the 
instrument of those who took up arms so boldly to vin- 
dicate American honor ; and hence the American people 
remembered his Presidency in after years less for his 
achievements than their own. 

As contrasted with his greater friend Jefferson, with 
whom comparisons were naturally instituted as long 
as they both lived, Madison appeared to some disad- 
vantage; impressing others less as a statesman, a free 
and easy liver and man of the world, than as some 
laborious closet counsellor, thoughtful and reserved, 
who puts others forward to act, after bestowing his 
judicious advice. But Madison's wisdom and experi- 
ence were ample; he was skilful in debate as with the 
pen ; though reticent, he knew well where to strike ; and 
with all his customary precision of manner and quiet 
demeanor, he was withal social and good-humored 
among intimate acquaintances, full of anecdote, and 
given not unfrequently to sly sallies of repartee that 
provoked a laugh. A little man in stature, with small 



156 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

features, rather wizened by the time he was President, 
he incited those who disliked his politics into diminu- 
tive and disparaging epithets ; but delicate and puny as 
he looked, few statesmen ever bore with such elasticity 
the terrible anxieties of an eventful career. In dress 
Madison always showed good taste ; there was no affec- 
tation or dandyism about him; but like a well-bred 
gentleman of the old school he appeared in dignified 
black, with knee breeches and buckles, black silk stock- 
ings, and powdered hair. 

Few Presidents, it has been remarked,* ever quitted 
office under circumstances so agreeable as those which 
surrounded this second of the Republican chieftains; 
and no man of good feeling, we may add, can grudge 
Madison the happiness under which his immensely diffi- 
cult administration at last terminated, nor the cheerful 
disposition which he was enabled to carry with him 
into the decline of years. Modest by nature, he never 
claimed more than his due allowance of the public grat- 
itude ; and in that humane and benevolent strain which 
suited his temperament far better than the fulminations 
of bloody strife, he closed his last annual message to 
Congress, with a eulogium upon the American people 
and their government for seeking " by appeals to rea- 
son, and by its liberal examples, to infuse into the law 
which governs the civilized world a spirit which may 
diminish the frequency or circumscribe the calamities 
of war, and meliorate the social and beneficent rela- 
tions of peace ; a government, in a word, whose conduct, 
within and without, may bespeak the most noble of all 
ambitions, — that of promoting peace on earth and good- 
will to man." 

*9 H. Adams, 142. 



CHAPTER X. 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MONROE. 

§ I. Period of Fifteenth Congress. March 4, 1817-March 3, 1819. 
— § II. Period of Sixteenth Congress. March 4, 1819-March 
3, 1821. 

MONROE was inaugurated on a day of spring 
sunshine, unusual for early March 
in the latitude of our national cap- m^ 7 ;. 
ital. The softness of the air, the radiance of 
the noonday sun, the serenity of the rural surroundings, 
from wooded heights to the placid Potomac, carried a 
sense of tranquil happiness to the hearts of thousands 
of spectators who had assembled for the out-of-door 
ceremonies on Capitol Hill. No accident or mishap 
from sunrise to midnight marred the peaceful pleasure 
of the auspicious occasion. 

These public ceremonies had most of the usual ac- 
companiments of a Presidential inauguration. There 
was an escort to Capitol Hill, and back through Penn- 
sylvania Avenue, made up, as in those times was cus- 
tomary, of District militia, regulars, and marines, to- 
gether with a large cavalcade of citizens and others 
whom a Virginian executive might well regard as 
friends and neighbors. The retiring and the incoming 
President rode together in friendly companionship. 
There was the usual brief reception in the Senate Cham- 
ber, where Tompkins, the Vice-President elect, had just 



1 5 3 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

been sworn into office; the adjournment to a portico 
outside, where, in sight of the assembled multitude 
and surrounded by members of Congress and the high 
officers of the republic, the chief magistrate-elect read 
his manuscript address, at whose close, Marshall, the 
Chief Justice, attired in black gown, administered the 
simple oath. Then followed an artillery salute, loud 
cheers, and the commotion of a dispersing crowd. The 
new President, like his predecessor, received congratu- 
lations in the afternoon and attended in the evening a 
public ball. 

But in one marked particular Monroe's inauguration 
differed from all others before or since. Though the 
ceremonies took place on Capitol Hill, they were con- 
ducted at a little distance from the historical or hal- 
lowed ground ; in fact, some hundred rods to the north- 
east of those ruined and smoke-stained wings of the 
Capitol, whose renovation had lately commenced, and 
in front of a new and unpretentious brick building 
which one Daniel Carroll and others had erected soon 
after the British invasion, and leased to the govern- 
ment for the accommodation of the national legislature. 
On an elevated portico, here erected for the special oc- 
casion, stood Monroe when he pronounced his inau- 
gural address; and, as he spoke, he and his auditors 
might contemplate an impressive spectacle. Yonder 
monumental piles, which marked the site of our former 
demolished national temple, were rising once again, 
slowly but safely, better proportioned, with an enlarged 
area, the walls resting upon their original foundations. 
Fragments of the old marble columns, consumed by in- 
tense heat, and blocks of freestone which were cracked 
and utterly spoiled, had ere this been removed from the 
north wing of the Capitol, where British desecration 



MONROE'S INAUGURATION 159 

did its worst; in the south wing, though columns and 
the vault they supported stood comparatively unin- 
jured, much had to be taken down, that a space might 
be cleared for rebuilding; so that at the present point 
of progress the work of architect and builder typified 
immortal hope blossoming afresh out of the relics of 
despair. This scene, which nature kindled into resplen- 
dent brightness, found no expression in Monroe's un- 
imaginative and premeditated utterances, but silently 
it deepened, we may rest assured, the lesson which was 
spoken. The key-note of his address was renewed 
faith in the Union. He dwelt upon the happy vindi- 
cation of our republican experiment through war as 
well as peace ; upon the renewed prosperity of the Amer- 
ican people, and an increasing harmony of States and 
sections, which he pledged himself to promote. Peace 
and recuperation, peace and national unity, — these were 
the sentiments of the day and the occasion. 



Monroe had come into the Presidency at a time 
and under circumstances most opportune for recon- 
ciling the jarring sections, and becoming in person the 
great pacificator of our national politics. He had 
earned promotion to the highest office by long and meri- 
torious public service; he had proved himself under 
Madison the most useful of civilians in a great crisis, 
as well as the most trusted. Nor had Monroe shrunk 
from assuming responsibility in that crisis; for when, 
in 1 8 14, he had charge of the War Department, and 
a conscription seemed inevitable, he frankly told his 
friends, who were preparing to nominate him to the 
Presidency, that as he must take the odium of pro- 
posing and executing so unpopular a measure, they 



i6o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ought to put him aside. War ended suddenly, and 
without a conscription; and now he had been chosen 
President by a vote so expressive of popular con- 
fidence, that ever since the day of election, when it 
became clear that political parties could rally no longer 
on the old issues, politicians of all parties had been 
hastening to assure him of their friendship and tender 
their co-operation. Monroe was, however, no theorist, 
but a sagacious, experienced, and withal honorable 
statesman ; one, moreover, who had been brought up in 
the school of Republicanism. Two things he felt were 
essential in any event to a successful administration: 
one that it should lean primarily on those who had 
brought it into power ; the other that it should be com- 
posed of harmonious and not distracting elements. For 
no reunion of political parties can be more false or de- 
ceptive than that which consists in dividing up the 
official patronage among the old leaders, victors and 
vanquished alike. To call in men who had inflexibly 
opposed the late war, and whose pride must have been 
deeply wounded by its results, meant only distraction 
and constant embarrassment, besides giving to the 
world the false impression that America had become 
ashamed of her own cause. Moreover, the chosen can- 
didate of a party should not be perfidious to that party. 
Hence, in the private correspondence between him- 
self and Jackson, already alluded to, Monroe had pro- 
nounced himself in favor of keeping the government 
in the hands of its decided friends, — of those who had 
stood firm in the day of trial. But at the same time he 
expressed the desire to indulge a spirit of moderation 
towards late opponents, to discriminate among them, 
and to bring all into one fold as quietly as possible. 
"Many men highly distinguished for their talents," 



MONROE'S POLITICAL VIEWS 161 

wrote Monroe, "are of opinion that the existence of 
the Federal party is necessary to keep union and order 
in the Republican ranks ; that is, that free governments 
cannot exist without parties. This is not my opinion. 
That the ancient republics were always divided into 
parties; that the English government is maintained 
by an opposition — that is, by the existence of a party 
in opposition to the ministry — I well know. But I 
think that the cause of these divisions is to be found in 
certain defects of those governments rather than in 
human nature ; and that we have happily avoided those 
defects in our system." 

The political tenets thus expressed were not those of 
the old school of statesmen. Neither Adams nor Jeffer- 
son believed that free government could exist without 
contending parties ; and such at this day is the popular 
belief, though many appear to insist that the public wel- 
fare requires their own party to be constantly intrenched 
in power while the opposition remains as constantly 
excluded. Nevertheless that old parties may so dissolve 
and old party names disappear, as to afford for a season 
the beautiful spectacle of a whole people reunited and 
knit firmly together in fraternal affection, there is no 
reason to doubt. Taken in their natural course, parties 
organize, disorganize, and reorganize, as vital issues 
change. Within seventy-five years passed away the 
Anti-Federal, the Federal, the first Republican, the 
Whig, the Native American parties. When, therefore, 
in some clearly defined and overwhelming political con- 
flict, producing fixed and lasting results, one set of polit- 
ical leaders has wholly lost and the other has wholly 
won, a dissolution of parties should ensue. To keep old 
wounds open, to lacerate the vanquished, becomes rather 
the effort of the ambitious and unprincipled, who are 



1 62 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

unwilling to disband their followers, than of a people 
like ours, who yearn for reconciliation and hasten to 
renew their intercourse. Here a magnanimous policy 
is the true and the safer one; and the administration 
that persecutes without crushing, compels new consti- 
tutional infractions to punish old ones, and leads out its 
party as it was before, has cruelly abused its opportu- 
nity. None, however, but a President of comprehensive 
views, sound discretion, and irreproachable honor can 
accomplish the needful task of exterminating old party 
divisions and giving new strength and direction to the 
government. To such a task at the present time 
Monroe addressed himself, with a confidence in results 
that was not misplaced. 



As the last of the great Virginian executives identi- 
fied with our early national history, Monroe challenges 
respect as one who had preserved for his own adminis- 
tration the ripe fruit of former experience. He was 
proud of his native State and of all who had given it 
imperishable renown. A filial follower of the great 
Jefferson, whom he still consulted on public affairs, 
and of whose confidence in the popular instinct he freely 
partook, he had nevertheless convinced himself, in the 
course of a long diplomatic service abroad, that jealous 
nations were not to be restrained from aggression by 
the maxims of peace and philanthropy. To Madison 
he resorted for advice still more constantly; and that 
worthiest of friends and wisest of advisers shone, when 
finally relieved of the executive direction, in a most be- 
coming sphere. But Monroe did not confine himself 
to the old Republican circles of influence. Marshall 
he admired. Nor could his heart cease to own its secret 



MONROE AND WASHINGTON 163 

allegiance to Virginia's greatest of sons, the first Presi- 
dent. The memory of a personal difference with Wash- 
ington left a sad but mellowing influence. Though 
Monroe always believed that injustice was done him in 
his recall from France in 1796, his resentment had 
turned gradually from chief executive to a partisan 
cabinet and then had dried up altogether ; possibly, too, 
as experience and reflection strengthened him, he came 
to ascribe much of the blame to himself. Be this as it 
may, by the time of his accession to the Presidency, the 
illustrious example of the first incumbent had become 
with Monroe an overpowering influence. In official 
methods and intercourse he aimed at restoring some- 
thing of its pristine dignity to the chief magistracy. He 
travelled through the States north and south as Wash- 
ington had done, to acquaint himself better with the 
condition and sentiments of the people. He sought the 
same high plane of unpartisan service. Without Wash- 
ington's commanding presence, transcendent fame, or 
superb endowments, he nevertheless had grown to re- 
semble him strongly in predominant traits of character ; 
and more especially, in an honest sincerity of purpose to 
administer well ; in habits of patient and deliberate in- 
vestigation, all contending arguments being weighed 
dispassionately ; and in a fixed determination not to be 
influenced in a public trust by private considerations. 
Even in personal looks the last Virginian, with his pla- 
cid and sedate expression of face, regular features, and 
a grayish-blue eye, which invited confidence, had come 
to appear not unlike the first ; so that in these years the 
names of Washington and Monroe became naturally 
coupled together. This resemblance, however, was 
most nearly like that of father and son, where the one, 
whose character was the stronger, has inspired awe, 



1 64 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

while the other touches rather the chord of personal 
sympathy by the blending of softer maternal traits. 

Towards his grand exemplar Monroe's later yearn- 
ings were indeed those of a surviving son, loved but 
perhaps disowned ; and he preserved with touching con- 
stancy the details of a strange story which circulated 
in Virginia circles. Washington, it was said, loved 
the young Monroe to his death; and his death was 
owing, not so much to an accidental personal exposure 
to the weather on an inclement day, according to the 
usual report, as to the chagrin which preyed on his 
mind after he saw how the fall election had resulted. 
For a Republican victory in Virginia brought Mon- 
roe from retirement into the governor's chair, and 
Washington felt that his own State rebuked him for a 
harshness he had long regretted but had never atoned 
for. 



In imitation of Washington, Monroe, soon after his 
inauguration, made an extended tour northward. Its 
results were remarkable in re-establishing that frater- 
nal spirit which he had pledged himself to restore, and 
in binding together once more States friendly and 
States disaffected to the cause of the Union during the 
late war. The state of Monroe's health, which needed 
relaxation, favored such a journey ; so, too, the desire 
to gain personal information; nor had the invitation 
of Otis and his Boston associates been forgotten. But 
the immediate occasion of the tour was to inspect and 
draw public attention to a new system of coast forti- 
fications, which, with the sanction of the late Congress, 
was progressing under the capable direction of General 
Bernard, a French officer, who brought letters from 



MONROE'S EASTERN TOUR 165 

Lafayette, and remained until the work was in sub- 
stance completed. 

It was in Boston, during the present tour, that the 
felicitous phrase "the era of good feeling" originated, 
which has since by general acclamation become the 
appropriate epithet of Monroe's eight-years' term. Nor 
can it be doubted that such an era, for better or worse, 
was now ushered in ; its best accompaniment being the 
long subsidence of popular tumults, and its worst the 
petty scheming of rival leaders, who must needs jostle 
in a port when the seas are closed. The old party lines 
presently began to fade. The name of "Democrat," 
which had been gradually acquiring favor, was dropped 
for a time; that of "Federalist" quite disappeared, and 
even Jeffersonian Republicanism lost its earlier signifi- 
cance. 

While in Boston, Monroe was pointedly warned by a 
Massachusetts man of conspicuous family, who dis- 
claimed personal interest, that former Federal leaders 
were jealous of one another, that they craved power 
and distinction, and that of them all only Webster and 
Lloyd could be trusted. He apprehended, too, that, 
notwithstanding the eastern people of all parties had 
now come over to him, they were still too much under 
the old and virulent political influences, and that only 
younger men, impressible with the national idea of the 
future, were fit to conduct them into new lines of policy 
and new combinations. Pre-eminently fit for that work 
was Webster, as the event proved ; a growing giant of 
superb intellectual endowments, born to command. 
Though a conservative by temperament and a Federal- 
ist by training, his past record had not committed him 
to the acerbities of the late war ; and present retirement 
serving him well for reflection and the accumulation of 



1 66 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

power, when he re-entered public life in the full panoply 
of manhood his section might trust him as an eloquent 
defender, and the whole people as a statesman whose 
ruling passion was the love of a national union. 



That Clay was vexed at not having the first place in 
the cabinet offered to him cannot be doubted ; nor that 
his chagrin was increased when he knew that Adams, 
with whom he had so constantly bickered at Ghent, 
had received the portfolio of State instead. It was 
early foreseen that in consequence Clay, though ranking 
hitherto among the friends of the new administration, 
would oppose it in Congress. A man of ardent ambi- 
tion, Clay was, nevertheless, honorable in the main, 
lofty in general purpose, and sedulous of the public 
welfare. He had been a most useful statesman of late, 
both as legislator and diplomatist, helping the country 
out of the war with Great Britain as skilfully as he had 
led it in ; and, in whatever service engaged, leaving the 
remarkable impression of courage, self-confidence and 
fertility in resources. But a lively imagination some- 
times captivated his judgment, and throwing the full 
radiance of his lantern forward, he would spring upon 
a new path without perceiving the obstacles which were 
closest. At this time his quick political instinct told 
Clay that the American people would leave the old 
parties and re-form on new issues. He darted 
forward to occupy those issues and become the standard 
bearer of the future. But he did not realize that this 
dissolution of old parties would be slow, very slow; 
nor how gladly our citizens would welcome, meantime, 
the unwonted respite from political turbulence. He 
could not be convinced that Monroe had both the power 



CLAY AND CRAWFORD 167 

and opportunity to repress the growth of new par- 
ties; and, blindly enough, he appears to have shared 
Crawford's belief that there would be a speedy schism 
among Monroe's supporters, followed by a new com- 
bination of the discordant elements which, headed by 
a dissatisfied West, his own section and the section not 
represented in the cabinet, might, under good manage- 
ment, bring the new administration to the ground. 

Both Crawford and Clay were in a sense political 
gamesters. Clay played for popularity, or rather for 
that public gratitude of which official promotion is, or 
should be, the natural expression. He caught the omens 
of the future, and his ambition was of that generous sort 
which makes one eager to be first in promoting meas- 
ures for the general good. Out of the ideas now floating 
in the public mind he gathered presently an American 
system or policy which he impressed upon the coming 
age with all the vigor of his eloquence and personality ; 
so that, whatever his individual disappointments, and 
these were many, his name remains inseparable from 
the annals of his times. 

With a good cause and generous motives for espous- 
ing it, Clay must have been irresistible. So impetuous 
was the torrent of his eloquence, rich in illustration and 
apt in allusion; so readily did he seem to grasp the 
strong points of the cause he presented, pleasing and 
surprising his hearers by the remote analogies which 
a delicate intuition detected; so strongly would he put 
forth the results of an investigation which bore no 
trace either of lapse or laborious study; and above all, 
such was his fervid appeal as a fellow-man to humanity, 
to the pride or the shame, not of collective listeners 
alone, but of each individual among them who dared 
to doubt; that he seemed to storm at the door of the 



1 68 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

heart while making a feint of convincing the intellect. 
It was thus that, though miscalculating the con- 
sequences, he had in 1812 nerved the country to plunge 
into war with Great Britain, and in 181 3 to continue 
the conflict for sailors' rights. The vivid personifica- 
tion of the cause he pleaded : the wanderer, the prisoner, 
the outcast, the persecuted sufferer, or, on the other hand, 
that cowardly auditor whom he defied to go home and 
confess to his constituents his own baseness, — by such 
portraiture he enforced his lesson. In such impassioned 
flights Clay seemed to soar in the pure ether, forgetful, 
like the eagle, of meaner motives that might have given 
his smoothly-spread wings their first flapping impulse 
thither. Clay's oratory, which has already passed into 
tradition, so inseparable were the matter and manner 
of his speeches, borrowed little from grace of gesture 
or the arts of rhetoric. He was tall and spare, not very 
muscular, and when in repose his countenance too often 
indicated dissipation as well as genius. When crossed 
in his wishes, or slighted, as on the present occasion, 
he showed himself haughty and exasperating; if in- 
dulged far, he became overbearing ; but his disposition 
was generous, and his temper by no means implacable. 
His friendly approach would dispel personal enmity 
and soften prejudice, one of its familiar accompani- 
ments being the offer or acceptance of a pinch of snuff, 
which he enjoyed after the custom of the times. With- 
out special features to attract, Clay's whole aspect was 
engaging, while he conversed agreeably. But when he 
spoke the impression conveyed was immeasurably 
greater. Not fluent or rapid in utterance at first, he 
gained in fire and energy of expression as his speech 
went on ; a slight awkwardness of gesture which might 
mar the effect, until speaker and listener had warmed 



SPANISH AMERICAN REVOLT 169 

into sympathy, ceased to be perceptible. Clay's eye 
beamed, his face brightened, all the movements of his 
figure showed that he was earnestly engrossed with 
his subject, and when at length he sat down the legis- 
lative chamber reverberated with the accents of a most 
melodious voice. 



Revolution in the Spanish American colonies was 
a phenomenon of the times which bore witness, first, 
to the rapid decline of Castilian influence in that new 
world which a Catholic line of monarchs had first ap- 
propriated as royal domain; next, to the expanding 
force of the self-governing idea for which the United 
States stood as chief exponent and exemplar. Lib- 
erty, repulsed by legitimacy abroad, winged her way 
across the Atlantic. Once more had commenced the war 
between Spain and her American colonies which ante- 
dated the present century. The tyranny and extortion 
of viceroys, the cupidity of adventurers from Europe, 
sufferings endured under an unequal rule and in the 
course of wars from which they themselves could reap 
no benefit, swelled the long catalogue of grievances 
presented by these South American subjects to justify 
their revolt against the mother-country. In 1778 the 
ignorant Indians of Upper Peru sought, but unsuc- 
cessfully, to throw off the yoke of Spain. Tranquillity 
followed their failure until the opening of the nine- 
teenth century; at which epoch, and in the midst of 
European war and commotions, many of the South 
American provinces found their secret longings for 
liberty fostered by the policy which Pitt or Napoleon 
might in turn elect to pursue, not from sympathy, 
but rather so as to cripple Spain, according as the lot of 



170 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

that country happened to be cast with the one opponent 
or the other. To the project of emancipating these 
Spanish provinces and laying their ports open to 
British commerce — for in British policy trade and phi- 
lanthropy seek constantly the same market — we have al- 
ready alluded in connection with that ill-fated Miranda 
enterprise which once so dazzled the mind of our Ham- 
ilton. Spain's ill success in the European struggle at 
length gave the South Americans the longed-for oppor- 
tunity, and by 1813-14 they had broken into rebellion, 
Buenos Ayres taking the lead. But the revolutionists 
were wary; for though mounting the republican cock- 
ade, hoisting an independent flag, and coining their own 
money, they issued decrees in the name of his Catholic 
Majesty. When Ferdinand VII. became restored to the 
Spanish throne, Buenos Ayres sent a deputation to 
Madrid acknowledging a conditional allegiance. But 
the haughty king refused to temporize; new popular 
outbreaks occurred; and on the 9th of July, 181 6, the 
patriot Congress of Buenos Ayres formally declared the 
independence of the province. From that day the con- 
test became one of contending armies, between invader 
and defender. Nor was the revolution confined to 
Buenos Ayres; for Paraguay and the eastern shore of 
the La Plata, regions hitherto governed by the Spanish 
commandant at Buenos Ayres, except for some portions 
held by Portugal, likewise revolted. Chili, too, for- 
mally declared an independence which, behind its moun- 
tain ramparts, had been virtually enjoyed for many 
years. The revolutionary spirit spread through Vene- 
zuela and the northern provinces of South America 
which had alternately refused and acknowledged Euro- 
pean allegiance ; and nowhere in the heart of the Andes 
or west of the valley of the Amazon was Spanish su- 



A NEW DEMOCRACY 171 

premacy longer secure. Brazil, however, that vast 
eastern domain of South America, had, after various 
vicissitudes, accepted an hereditary empire in 1808 
from Portugal, and was long contented. 



The great Republican party which Jefferson founded 
now hastened to a dissolution, having fulfilled its impor- 
tant mission, first, by educating the American people to 
trust their own virtue and capacity, and next by in- 
ducing them to strike boldly away the last links which 
bound us in colonial subservience to Europe and Euro- 
pean methods. 

Of late years there had been an ardent element 
perceptible in our politics, smothered, perhaps, and 
smouldering, so long as talents, education, and prop- 
erty still clearly kept the mastery. Smoke issued from 
the flanks of the rumbling earth, and down in some 
yawning fissure glowed the red embers. These were 
the eruptions of the fierce but nearly suffocated de- 
mocracy, jealous and emulous of rule, but always re- 
pressed, or at least restrained from mischief, by the 
common sense of the cheerful majority. 

Wherever, then, great social inequalities exist, there 
must be a class which staggers under harsh burdens 
of life that cannot be lifted, and knows little of its 
pleasures. That class, under a political system like 
ours, constitutes the fierce democracy, or, under its 
harshest aspect, the mob, the commune; and let these 
protest, let them vote as they choose, the first step is 
taken towards making them contented citizens. More 
conservative by temperament, more respectful to su- 
periors, more in harmony with well-ordered systems 
of government, less ignorant, less violent, better quali- 



172 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

fied to rise superior to early disadvantages and achieve 
wealth and position, is the native citizen of Anglo- 
Saxon blood. It is the fickle and excitable immigrant 
who falls more readily into the class we describe; for 
the hand of oppression has moulded habits and charac- 
ter so that adaptation to free institutions becomes diffi- 
cult, almost hopeless; and without hope one curses the 
happy. Opportunity to rise dissolves individual mem- 
bership in this class, and keeps jealousy from compact- 
ing mischief. 



As between the two old parties, Federalist and 
Republican, the latter had doubtless most befriended 
this class, and commanded its sympathy. It was 
Jefferson's party which called upon those in the hum- 
bler walks to participate, while Hamilton's bade them 
submit. It was the former which had welcomed for- 
eign toilers to these shores, while the other sought 
not only to repress, but to banish him. The excesses 
of the French revolution, nevertheless, made the name 
of "Democrat" long obnoxious to Anglo-Americans. 
Washington himself put a stigma upon it. Nor, as we 
have shown, had Jefferson himself, but Jefferson's 
enemies, applied the epithet to that well-organized force 
which carried the Presidency in 1800, and had held it 
ever since; their object being to excite prejudice, his 
to allay it. Fifteen years, however, had produced a 
change. The Republican party, as a national body, 
now embraced both democratic and conservative ele- 
ments, and one might have heard since Jefferson's re- 
tirement not only of "Republican" or "old school" men, 
but of "Democratic Republicans;" nay, even of those 
who gloried in the name of Democrat. The "Federal- 



DECAY OF PARTIES 173 



ist party" as such existed no longer, but conservatives 
of a British patrician cast, who took pride in Federal 
antecedents, were to be found in the political ranks; 
these not unfrequently holding the balance of power 
amid the vulgar quarrels to which factious republicans 
of democratic stripe descended, more especially in the 
Middle States, where incongruous elements, native and 
foreign, were brought together. Federalism was allied 
at the Eastward with judges, college professors, scions 
of the old families, rich merchants, and the other ele- 
ments locally dominant in its homogeneous society. 
By way of allusion to the past, or for convenient dis- 
crimination, newspapers would sometimes employ still 
the old party names; but the word "Federalist" had ere 
this passed into our popular speech as the odious 
synonyme of "Tory," "Hartford Conventionist," or 
"Blue-light man" ; and most who had once been proud 
of the name wished it dropped. 

Monroe's tour served to obliterate these old party 
distinctions, so that for a time even the rising "Demo- 
crat" was forgotten. To national issues succeeded 
State or local ones, scarcely a basis being afforded for 
consolidating political differences. To say that the 
old parties amalgamated at this era would be inaccu- 
rate : it was rather that they now disbanded, permitting 
those in the ranks to turn to private concerns. They 
who lived by politics, however, still warred as they 
might for its patronage. 



Among issues of the day which threatened new po- 
litical combinations, that of internal improvements de- 
serves further mention. With society sweetened in its 
harmonious intercourse, we had turned already as by 



i 7 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

a common impulse to great undertakings, of which the 
Erie canal seemed at this hour the most gigantic. 
Throughout America new roads, new canals, new edi- 
fices, were projected. To meet this enormous outlay 
and competition, the State, the public, would be urged 
to subscribe, if not to shoulder the enterprise. Admit- 
ting, however, the right of a State legislature in the 
premises, how stood it with Congress and the national 
government? For the extension of roads and canals 
beyond State limits, so as to knit remote parts of the 
Union together, was by all conceded to be a national 
benefit. One of Madison's last official acts was to 
negative a bill which proposed setting apart a national 
fund for internal improvements. The Executive objec- 
tion being the constitutional one, a dissension now arose 
in the Republican ranks ; many leaders, in their eager- 
ness to commit the general treasury to projects, popular 
in their own State, whose cost its legislature dared not 
assume, acceding to that liberal construction of national 
powers for which Hamilton and the Federalists had 
earlier contended; while others held to Jefferson and 
the old Virginia doctrine that the federal constitution 
conferred a delegated authority from the States or the 
people which should be strictly interpreted. The main 
question was whether to place a broad or narrow con- 
struction upon that phrase of the instrument which 
gives Congress authority to lay taxes "to pay the debts 
and provide for the general welfare," so as to extend or 
not the powers specifically enumerated to whatever 
would promote the general welfare. 



A remarkable man now emerges from brief retire- 
ment into conspicuous notice, to fix more constantly 



JACKSON'S POPULARITY 175 

the public gaze, and even concentrate it, until recog- 
nized as the most striking American of the age, and in 
a certain sense the most popular, if not the most illus- 
trious. For whatever Jackson might do, were it done 
rightly or wrongly, he threw himself vigorously into 
the act, and made a deep impression, often a sensation, 
such, probably, as he studied to produce. As the hero 
of New Orleans and conqueror of the Creeks, he en- 
joyed already the best military renown of all our 
generals who had served in the second war, because the 
only one of them all who had won a brilliant victory. 
Peace did not find him first in actual rank, however, 
nor was his reputation derived from that trying test 
against a skilful foe, which exacts the steady discipline 
of forces in hand, profound insight, a mind capable of 
combining and of studying the intricate combinations of 
others, an executive grasp of the thousand minute de- 
tails involved in feeding, equipping, and moving a 
large army separated into detachments, and, above all, 
self-command under difficulties. No one, perhaps, ex- 
cept Washington and Hamilton, had as yet on this con- 
tinent fulfilled the ideal of commander; certainly none 
during the late war, whose military exploits furnished 
as much for blushing as boasting ; though Jacob Brown, 
now the ranking general, and certainly a well-deserving 
hero, displayed a bureau capacity for times of peace 
which few would have conceded to one so rash, so un- 
learned, and withal so little used to conventional forms 
as Jackson. Nevertheless, this one had addressed him- 
self to the humbler task of subduing savages or defend- 
ing a city with an audacity, zeal, and fertility of re- 
source deserving of wider opportunities; and he alone 
could have said, with Caesar, "I came, I saw, I con- 
quered." 



176 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Here let us remark, that between the two great lead- 
ers of the American democracy, as developed down to 
the era of the civil war of 1861, the earlier and the later, 
cordiality never existed ; each seems never to have appre- 
ciated the other, and certainly the younger never ac- 
knowledged himself a disciple. The passing conjunction 
of two natures, powerful and original, but singularly in- 
harmonious, and never brought into practical co-opera- 
tion, explains this antipathy; for antipathy it must be 
called. Jefferson and Jackson first met in 1797 at Phil- 
adelphia, the temporary capital ; the one Vice-President 
elect, and the recognized leader of a party which ex- 
ulted in the first flush of national victory, persuading 
his friends to give Washington a generous exit; the 
other new to politics and the polite constraints of so- 
ciety, a sullen nobody of that party, sitting in the Sen- 
ate like a cynic in his tub, shaggy and uncouth in ap- 
pearance, who doggedly refused to offer incense to the 
retiring President. And thus it went on for the brief 
remnant of Jackson's first sojourn in national politics; 
the urbane president of the Senate watching with 
amusement a member who was so choleric and ill at 
ease that when he rose to speak the words choked in his 
throat. Jackson, in fact, was not cut out to figure in 
a deliberative body of dignified men ; and the turning- 
point of his career came when Tennessee made this 
toughest of her pioneers, at the age of 34, a major- 
general of State militia. Jefferson, then, was of the 
upper stratum in republican politics, Jackson of the 
lower; the one of good blood and inherited fortune, 
seeming to stoop that he might serve the multitude; 
the other a man of the multitude, and of those jealous 
democrats, moreover, who envied the nobly born; in- 
deed, a southern white of extraction so humble, that 



JACKSON AND JEFFERSON 177 

to this day it is a matter of dispute whether he was born 
in North or South Carolina. In Jefferson appeared 
tact, the desire to convince, and a persevering good 
humor; Jackson, on the other hand, though persever- 
ing, was only good humored while he had his own way, 
could be influenced by those alone who knew how to 
play upon his vanity, and was satisfied when he com- 
pelled. Jefferson was smooth and diplomatic, Jackson 
dogged and downright. The one belonged to that 
older school of our politics which separates public from 
private friendships, puts the trustworthy and capable 
first, and remits each who serves to his proper place; 
but with the latter the main theory was to make both 
public and private friendship consist in personal at- 
tachment to himself, and use patronage as the rich 
spoils of martial victory. 

While these two remarkable men remained in con- 
tact, the one was the idol of his party, and kept the 
reins of national discipline, while the other idolized no 
one, preferring the easy surroundings of frontier life 
and to rise in wealth and consequence with his adopted 
State. His choice was discreet for his personal ad- 
vancement; for Tennessee long clung to her favorite 
son, and Jackson's devoted band advanced him with un- 
flagging zeal in the teeth of a formidable prejudice, in- 
herited from our colonial ancestors, in favor of trained 
statesmanship and social culture as essential qualifica- 
tions for high public trusts. 



By the time Congress re-assembled in November, 
1 8 18, Andrew Jackson was of all Americans the man 
universally discussed. So rude was the shock given 
of late to republican susceptibilities by his exploits in 



1 78 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Florida,* whose outcome might yet be a European war, 
that the public mind was still bewildered ; many ques- 
tioned the right, more the propriety of his acts; but 
the course taken by our administration aided a lenient 
public judgment, while the shouts of Tennessee and 
the far west, proclaiming Jackson a genuine hero, the 
coming man, rolled over the Alleghanies, and mingled 
with the thundering surfs of the Atlantic. The gen- 
eral mass will quickly sympathize with him who has 
dared in the common cause; nor in those days, while 
the bitterness of the late war lingered, was the Amer- 
ican democracy likely to idolize the less one who em- 
bodied in himself those traits which awaken enthusi- 
asm because he had executed two Britishers and two 
Red Stick chiefs with impartial contempt. An extraor- 
dinary man, indeed, had arisen at the west; the story 
of his life was asked, his services at New Orleans were 
recalled; and to become in this country the theme of 
national discussion, compelling with so much public 
curiosity such genuine admiration, meant of necessity 
to be canvassed by the politicians for the Presidency. 



Tenderly and sacredly as our Revolutionary sires 
were now treated by those whose career emblazons the 
annals of 1812, and whose anxiety to wipe away the 
last stain of filial reproach appeared so manifest, pos- 
terity has not in its turn rendered to them such decent 
offices. Whatever the merits of those who conducted 
the second struggle of American Independence, and the 
undoubted service they rendered in severing this coun- 
try from Europe, they never reached the same high 

*This was during the recent conflict known as the "Seminole 
war." 



A NATIONAL SENTIMENT 179 

plane of aesthetic honors. The poverty of subjects for 
the artist's pencil, which essays in vain to poetize frig- 
ates fighting a duel in mid-ocean, or long ranks resting 
their rifles upon cotton breastworks, may in part ac- 
count for this; and of the few scenes which, well de- 
picted, ought to stir the depths of a loyal heart, Perry's 
victory alone has yet been attempted with anything 
approaching success. A weightier explanation is found 
in the levelling effect of our modern institutions and the 
development of a national temperament less susceptible 
than formerly to patriotic impressions ; moreover, in the 
long-divided sentiment which has prevailed among 
Americans themselves respecting the justifying causes 
of this second war, and as to whether the United States 
had really gained by it. That the war was both justi- 
fiable on principle and advantageous in fact, — crowned, 
indeed, with blessings far greater than immediately ap- 
peared, and only to be reproved as rashly undertaken, — 
history must admit; nevertheless, the first struggle 
of 1776 burns with more of the celestial fire, nor 
has America ever produced but one commander who, 
like Washington, embodied the cause for which he 
fought. 

With this new buoyancy of republican and New- 
World ideas, this spontaneous impulse given to our 
national character, there mingled somewhat of a lofty 
and pitying scorn for Europe and the Old- World insti- 
tutions. Our American people felt that they had a coun- 
try of their own; and proudly did they boast of that 
country at this moment, as they drew unflattering com- 
parisons. What would become of exhausted and bank- 
rupt Europe, now waking from the dream of imperial- 
ism, its rulers and people alike beggared and hastening 
to decay, its restored monarchs searching for the gew- 



180 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

gaws of infallibility, the legitimate scions of the aristoc- 
racy rearing illegitimate offspring? Ferdinand was a 
despot without resources, the royal Bourbons of France 
puppets of an armed alliance who pulled the wires, the 
acting King of England a drunkard and libertine, and 
its actual one a hopeless imbecile. The age of barbar- 
ism had commenced in the Old World, and some mas- 
ter-spirit would end it. But here, in the New World, 
the sovereign people, fearing neither priestcraft nor 
kingcraft, made equal laws and lived by them. Those 
laws appealed to the whole human race in the spirit of 
universal philanthropy. If the Indian remained an 
outcast and the negro a slave, their fate, nevertheless, 
could not involve that of our glorious inheritance. 
Here, on freedom's natal day, confusion to tyrants was 
the toast; success, moreover, to our South American 
brethren-in-arms, and to Bolivar, just emerging from 
exile to be their great deliverer. Happy was America, 
no longer shackled, no longer in superstitious bondage. 
Here on these shores was found the Elysium for the op- 
pressed of all climes, liberty's safe-harbor, the land of 
peace and plenty. 



The period of 1819-20 was one of great depression 
and distress. Many a one who had lately been inde- 
pendent and thrifty lost by misplaced confidence in some 
bank or through the failure of a friend whose notes he 
had indorsed, or a brother, son, or father who must be 
shielded from imprisonment. They who went surety 
for others smarted for it. Even for him who stood 
clear, the maxim was to hoard and wait. Trade was 
for the present prostrate and profitless ; and capital 
which had earned ten per cent, on good security had 



FINANCIAL DISTRESS 181 

to content itself with four or five. Benton, whose im- 
pressions were derived at the far west, has recalled these 
years as an era of gloom and agony ; with no price for 
produce and property, no sales except by the marshal 
and sheriff, and no purchaser except the creditor and 
some hoarder of money ; with stop laws, property laws, 
replevin laws, stay laws, the intervention between debtor 
and creditor, constituting the chief business of legisla- 
tion; with no medium of exchange except depreciated 
paper, and inland exchanges utterly deranged. Even 
silver change was scarce in these days; and while at 
the chief centres of trade prices were accommodated 
to the small Spanish 6 1 /^ and I2j4 cent coins, little 
tickets or bits of foul paper, marked with numerals and 
signed by the baker or grocer, served as fractional cur- 
rency in the remote interior. All this prevailing dis- 
tress gave of necessity an acrid flavor to whatever pub- 
lic question might provoke a controversy, as we shall 
presently see. But we find it alleviated by that spirit of 
voluntary and sympathetic co-operation which is after 
all the excellent trait of our republican life; co-opera- 
tion in present succor for the unfortunate, in benevolent 
works, in devising the intelligent means of recuperat- 
ing. 



For the present, and, indeed, during Monroe's long 
administration through two terms, Spain and Spanish 
American affairs supplied the chief, in fact, almost the 
only element of excitement in our foreign relations. A 
few niggardly favors reciprocated with other European 
powers for the passing benefit of commerce, other more 
tangible advantages sought on our behalf but refused, 
— this tells the rest of the tale of diplomacy. But the 



1 82 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

absorption of Spanish territory in our Union under the 
Florida treaty, and the ultimate fate of the South 
American colonies, aroused the passions of the hour; 
and European countries and the United States keenly 
watched the progress of the patriot struggle in the 
southern continent, not only with those diverse sympa- 
thies which result from political differences of creed, 
but with the consciousness of diverse interests, such as 
might eventually lead neutral powers into rival combi- 
nations, sooner or later, for the purpose of bringing 
about the differing results hoped for. Spain was at this 
juncture mistress neither of the situation nor herself; 
nevertheless, mutual conferences of the allied powers 
which had brought the European war to a successful 
close dictated her course as to Spanish America, at the 
same time checkmating the schemes of one another. In 
these conferences England took the lead, and to make 
that lead the more positive in favor of a solution which, 
well worked out, promised a decided enlargement of 
British commerce with the New World, her ministry 
favored more and more the idea of fellowship and 
a friendly co-operation with the United States; for 
we were a rising power whose interests and feelings 
tended, like those of our mother-country, to counteract 
those of narrow-minded continental sovereigns who 
were jealous of great navies and stubbornly opposed 
to all governments which professed a leaning to public 
opinion. 



Before entering upon the narrative of the Missouri 
controversy and its immediate results, let us briefly 
sketch the progress of our anti-slavery cause to 1819. 
There had been no serious agitation of the dreaded topic 



AMERICAN SLAVERY 183 

since the African slave trade was abolished in 1808. 
With that unanimous and happy fulfilment of a consti- 
tutional opportunity, patriots would fain have thought 
their duty done, and trusted the rest to a favoring Prov- 
idence, whose approval they felt. But to stop the sup- 
ply of Africans from abroad was like clipping but one 
root from a weed which was still strongly imbedded 
in the soil, and might grow and propagate in other di- 
rections. The population of the United States in- 
creased after the act of 1808, as previously, at an aver- 
age rate of about one-third in ten years; and if the 
whites had multiplied in numbers during the last decade 
the blacks themselves had kept not uneven pace. Con- 
fronted with this inner phase of the unsolved problem, 
the philanthropic spirit of the age turned, after war 
had ceased, to the possibilities of amalgamation, or, as 
more fairly styled, political incorporation, which Jef- 
ferson and his school of benefactors had always treated 
with a tender abhorrence. What was to be the ultimate 
relation of the black and white races should they 
grow on together under the progressive institutions of 
a republic surely great in destiny? Or could those 
races, together with the red, become so disconnected 
as to leave to Americans not only a white man's gov- 
ernment, but a white man's country? 

One point had always been ceded without contention : 
namely, that each of the original States, and of those 
others since admitted into the Union, unfettered by 
fundamental restraints imposed by Congress, was sov- 
ereign over the institution within its own borders. The 
State could abolish or perpetuate slavery at discretion 
where it already existed, besides regulating the condi- 
tion of blacks within the jurisdiction, whether bond or 
free. Accepting this premise, the free States had loy- 



1 84 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ally refrained from trespassing upon the rights of those 
already wedded to slavery ; a conscience-smitten minor- 
ity of their inhabitants resorting perhaps to mild re- 
monstrance and exhortation, but the majority justify- 
ing apathy and inaction by putting the national respon- 
sibility upon the planters, somewhat as did planters of 
the day themselves upon their British ancestors. More 
than this, fugitive slaves who escaped into a free State 
were surrendered on the claim of the white owner; 
not without some pang of remorse, we may be sure, nor 
without a lurking fear lest some free black should be 
smuggled, because of his skin, into bondage; but for 
the imperious reason that the constitution of the United 
States, the charter of our own liberties, must be obeyed. 
And yet while fugitive slave laws might have been pro- 
nounced in 1789, or when that constitution went into 
effect, as really for the general benefit of adjacent 
States, a singular geographical change had since taken 
place. In fact, the original lines had since become so 
contracted while we pushed westward to the Missis- 
sippi, that at present, thirty years later, an anti-slavery 
and pro-slavery tier of States confronted one another 
from behind a long parallel ; a real presage that when 
obedience to the constitution became sullen, those laws 
would be trampled on, and two sections of the Union, 
socially dissimilar and even repugnant, would occupy 
a relative attitude surely inviting civil war and blood- 
shed. The anti-slavery band of States voluntarily 
choosing freedom was already completed; New York 
having in 181 7 proclaimed the total abolition of slavery 
within its borders to be completed by July 4, 1827. So 
on the other side had the pro-slavery States drawn 
closer together, united by common traditions, common 
blood, and the common pursuit of staple agriculture 



AMERICAN SLAVERY 185 

through the great South, to protect, if not propagate, 
a system which they knew the voice of modern civiliza- 
tion condemned, but which to them meant for the pres- 
ent social order, stability, property, life itself, and the 
means of living. For the Union had never said to a 
State, "Emancipate and we will indemnify you;" 
but "Emancipate and bear your own loss." There 
was a southern conscience ; nevertheless the dread of an 
unshared impoverishment in order to please mankind 
stifled its voice. 

Abolition by sovereign will of a slave State now 
ceased, and as for enslavement by a free State's legisla- 
tion, this had never been attempted. Mild persuasion 
had done its work. Freedom called her roll at the 
north ; slavery hers at the south ; and compulsion on the 
national behalf being impossible, the Union left each 
section, or rather each sovereign member thereof, to its 
own independent action; limiting national exertions, 
first to making good the slave-trade prohibition, and 
next to forfending slavery from the soil of our virgin 
territories ; for thus did the constitution as it stood cir- 
curnscribe Congress. 

/To the natural instinct which had drawn together 
so closely the southern staple-producing States for mu- 
tual protection was added a propagating zeal now dis- 
played by enthusiasts of that section, and much stimu- 
lated of late by the immense consumption of cotton and 
cotton fabrics in the world's market. South Carolina, 
Georgia, and the adjacent States fed those noisy spin- 
dles which in the mother-country and here multiplied 
so rapidly that the annual production ill satisfied their 
hungry maw. The advanced price of cotton and other 
staples, such as rice and sugar, which necessitated toil 
in the broiling sun and exposure such as only blacks 



1 86 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

could well endure, had created, therefore, an unprece- 
dented demand for suitable lands for their culture and / 
suitable laborers to till them. ' 

Hence an obvious tendency in States thus interested 
to band together, not only with a fixed purpose to resist 
emancipation, but so as to procure slaves wherever they 
might without open offence to other Christian commu- 
nities. Hence, too, an invention by the staple raiser of 
various sophistries which might prop up the institution 
and palliate the guilt of slaveholding, if guilt it must be 
called ; none of them at this time more popular or more 
pernicious than that to spread our domestic slavery over 
a larger surface of land would alleviate the mischief. 
For, conceding with Jefferson that to move a slave from 
one State to another would make no slave of a human 
being who was not a slave before, what must be the 
logical result of spreading the contagious ambition, or 
rather the social necessity, of being a white slaveholder, 
through new settlements, but to further the propagation 
of slaves, in order to gratify that ambition or social ne- 
cessity? And admitting an increased propagation, 
who will ask whether the supply comes by breeding or 
importation ? 

It deserves, however, to be said of a statesman whose 
influence in moulding American character was so re- 
markable that even his erroneous maxims, of which 
this was one, crept into common speech, that Jefferson 
did not to his dying day cease to deplore the existence 
of slavery, nor did he believe in African colonization 
as an adequate means of ridding the United States of 
the system. To him the association which prosecuted 
this undertaking was no more than a missionary so- 
ciety, having humane and unaggressive ends. Those 
ends theoretically he favored; and emancipation still 



MISSOURI CONTROVERSY 187 

captivated his fancy, notwithstanding the alluring in- 
fluences of plantation surroundings benumbed his judg- 
ment, and he became less of an abolitionist to be more 
of a southerner. 



We are now prepared to enter upon the narrative of 
the Missouri controversy, precursor by two generations 
of probably the grandest and saddest civil strife re- 
corded in the annals of the nineteenth century. Fought 
out and settled upon the legislative arena at Washing- 
ton, though agitating our whole people meanwhile, this 
earlier controversy covered three distinct spaces of 
time: (1) The second session of the 15th Congress; 
(2) the first session; and (3) the second session of the 
1 6th Congress. The immediate question at issue con- 
cerned the admission of Missouri into the Union as a 
State, released from territorial constraints. But under 
the circumstances this question involved another of 
transcendent magnitude; namely, whether the great 
northwest territory comprised in the Louisiana pur- 
chase should be consecrated to freedom or desecrated 
by slavery. For as the case stood at the outset, were 
Missouri now to be admitted into the Union with per- 
missive slavery, simply because a majority of its inhab- 
itants so desired, Congress abdicated all constitutional 
control in this respect over territory purchased and paid 
for by the United States, in favor of a sort of squatter 

/vereignty among the settlers. 
Viewed from the standpoint of a stern mo- 1820. 
rality, the Missouri Compromise must be pro- 
nounced a surrender to the slave power, the cowardly 
abandonment of a cause and occasion for which north- 
ern men might as well have drawn the sword then as did 



1 88 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

their posterity forty years later. But this point of view 
is not just to the honor and statesmanship of the times. 
The political evil was inherent in the constitution itself, 
which brought States slaveholding and non-slavehold- 
ing into indissoluble bonds, providing no radical means 
for assimilating their condition. The anti-slavery spirit 
of 1776 had died out, or rather had exhausted its power 
of persuading States to emancipate; a border line sep- 
arated already the free and slave sections; and to ex- 
tend that line beyond the Mississippi and ultimately to 
the Pacific had at length become a political necessity, 
with civil war for the only alternative. Latitude 36 
30' was not the established parallel throughout, though 
had Virginia followed the impulse of her better days 
it might have been, and it fairly marked the division 
of the Union at the cotton belt. In procuring the es- 
tablishment of that parallel, freedom gained the first 
real territorial victory it had won since the adoption of 
the constitution; for the renown of the Ordinance of 
1787 belongs justly to the old Continental Congress. 
This was a victory worth all the agitation it cost, and 
securing a new northwest territory to freedom. 
Whether a greater area might not have been rescued 
from bondage without hazarding fratricide and disunion 
we cannot assume to judge; perhaps the north would 
well have pressed opposition to the Missouri bill long 
enough to see whether the south would not yield the 
whole remnant of the territory, Arkansas included ; but 
it is certain that the Trimble amendment, which offered 
to test this point, was voted down in the Senate. Nor, 
in justice to the southern compromisers, should the am- 
biguous "forever," over which Monroe's cabinet dif- 
fered so greatly, be taken for trickery. Not a State of 
this Union which once emancipated ever restored sla- 



MISSOURI COMPROMISE 189 

very afterwards or made serious attempt to do so ; not 
one of the new States carved out of western territory 
once pledged to freedom ever deliberately as a State 
broke the fundamental terms upon which its admission 
was granted. The real mischiefs which the Missouri 
Compromise engendered were these : the strife for po- 
litical power between slavery and freedom which it 
sanctioned and perpetuated upon the broad national 
domain; the insatiate appetite for foreign acquisitions 
south of that line, whether by war or purchase, which it 
whetted ; and finally, by suffering an immense State like 
Missouri, whose population near the confluence of the 
Mississippi and Missouri rivers was sure to increase 
rapidly, to be set above the geographical latitude, the 
license it gave to the wolves of slavery to ravage among 
the scattered free soil settlers over its borders. Never- 
theless this sectional compact was faithfully sustained 
for more than thirty years ; it was broken at length not 
by those who had bound themselves to keep it, but by 
degenerate sons of freedom, by disciples also of the 
John Randolph school who constantly stirred the south 
to believe that slavery should accept no territorial re- 
straints at all. That perfidious rupture, as our later 
history will show, brought the north once more to its 
feet, as no other aggression of its rights could have 
done, and re-established party opposition on the geo- 
graphical line; the south once more opposing its solid 
phalanx, for the preservation of its common interests, 
until crushed in the unequal contest thus provoked. 
Slavery and slaveholders went down in the dust to- 
gether, and the American constitution became, what it 
never had been before, a charter of universal freedom. 



CHAPTER XL 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES MONROE. 

§ I. Period of Seventeenth Congress. March 4, 1821-March 3, 
1823. — § II. Period of Eighteenth Congress. March 4, 1823- 
March 3, 1825. 

IN Monroe we had a national leader to whom growth 
and experience meant everything, and whose ac- 
quirements as a statesman, though not shining, 
were solid. He was ambitious of a good record; he 
aimed to set an example ; but at the same time he was 
modest for his personal fame, called himself an instru- 
ment, and cared more to fulfil than be a figure. He 
wrought out his best work in silence, "investigating by 
the midnight lamp the laws of nature and nations;'' 
he surrounded himself with the ablest advisers, sought 
their counsel, and encouraged their confidence. He was 
at this last and best epoch of his long public career 
patient, tolerant, very slow but remarkably correct in 
conclusions, magnanimous and considerate. As chief 
magistrate he took broad and lofty views of public pol- 
icy ; as a man he was, as he had ever been, the soul of 
honor. He had a quiet energy in directing affairs. 
His judgment, fallible enough while young and in bad 
company, had at length ripened into something like ex- 
cellence of discernment, as even they admitted who had 
affected to despise his talents. Experience and singu- 
lar vicissitude, so far from curdling, sweetened a tern- 



CHARACTER OF MONROE 191 

per naturally hasty and irritable, and his justice was 
always tempered with mercy. 

Not original in his cast of mind, and always liable 
to be underrated, Monroe owed his high station less to 
dazzling superiority than his own unflinching persever- 
ance; something, doubtless, to friendship and oppor- 
tunity, yet more to that sympathy which all feel when 
one who is seen to fall rises again. Often had he 
broken his wing against the precipice upon which he 
now perched so serenely. His firmness yielded to no 
obstacle, and his ideal of statesmanship was constantly 
nobler. 

Of Monroe's traits, these, perhaps, gave to his ad- 
ministration its chief influence: the conscientious per- 
formance of official duty, magnanimity, and the habit 
of deliberation. As to the first, all are familiar with 
Jefferson's description of him as one whose whole soul 
might be turned wrong side outward without discover- 
ing a blemish to the world. Of his rare magnanimity 
instances are scattered through this whole eight years' 
record. Daschkoff, who had behaved very badly, was 
graciously treated when he took his leave; Crawford 
was not dropped; Jackson's indiscretions were lightly 
passed over ; and Clay, after four years of factious dis- 
turbance, had to own an act of unexpected generosity. 
Indeed, so unsparing a critic as John Quincy Adams 
remarks that Monroe's failings leaned to virtue's side, 
that he indulged everybody, was scrupulously regardful 
of individual feeling, and exercised too reluctantly the 
power of harsh discipline and censure. He certainly 
was open and unsuspecting, and betrayed a sensation 
of pain whenever misconduct in those about him was 
pointed out. But he was so solicitous not to use the 
public patronage as his own that many said of him that 



192 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

he had appointed his enemies to office in preference to 
his friends. 

Long used though he had been to public affairs, and 
robust in constitution, Monroe worried much in private 
over difficult problems or a passing discontent. He did 
not easily throw off official burdens, and when a 
weighty matter of state was pending the counsellor who 
called could not divert his mind; for he would revert 
to the subject still uppermost, and take new advice upon 
its present bearings, leaving the lighter business to wait, 
instead of dispatching all together. Many a lonely and 
serious hour did Monroe pass when troubled or per- 
plexed, veiling the deeper sufferings of his sensitive 
nature from the world. Nevertheless he hid his 
wounds as a chief magistrate should ; and though wa- 
vering often while making up his mind, he was firm 
when the decision was taken. He came to a conclusion 
at last, and then stood fearlessly by the consequences. 
"He had," says Calhoun, "a wonderful intellectual pa- 
tience, and could, above all men that I ever knew, when 
called on to decide on an important point, hold the sub- 
ject immovably fixed under his attention till he had 
mastered it in all its relations. It was mainly to this 
admirable quality that he owed his highly accurate judg- 
ment. I have known many much more rapid in reach- 
ing the conclusion, but very few with a certainty so un- 
erring." 

Standing, nevertheless, like a breakwater, between 
the passions of an earlier and later epoch, it cannot be 
thought strange if the fibre of Monroe's greatness 
should not in our day be well known or appreciated. 
Even contemporaries who recalled him as a devoted 
and often indiscreet partisan in early life, an anti-Fed- 
eralist in 1787, one so enthusiastic in 1795 over the 



MONROE'S APPEARANCE 193 

French republic as to join in the fraternal accolade, now 
petulant, now despondent, now almost vindictive, were 
slow to believe that he had grown into so great a man. 
But his soundness was fundamental and its secret 
spring diligent application. 

Monroe, though liberally educated, was no scholar. 
His tastes inclined neither to literature nor philosophy, 
but were absorbed in politics. He read few books on 
light subjects, but learned chiefly from personal experi- 
ence and intercourse among men, and was most inter- 
ested in whatever might subserve the immediate pur- 
pose. During his long service at home and abroad he 
had made himself familiar with the affairs of Europe 
and his own country. Among ideas presented and the 
motives for offering them, he discriminated admirably. 
One found him in conversation agreeable but not strik- 
ing, slightly reserved, often grave, and in fact preoccu- 
pied with his official cares. He wrote kindly and dis- 
creetly in his private letters, but seldom in a lively 
strain, unless vindication of motives was the object, and 
then he was almost eloquent. Of official documents he 
prepared many, full of argument, at times very able, but 
devoid of imagination and often prosy. 

At this interval of sixty years or more, scarce a tra- 
dition can be found as to how Monroe looked, what he 
said unofficially, or how he conducted himself; and 
yet he made extensive tours while President, and 
was seen and beloved by all. Cabinet advisers pre- 
serve executive traits, it is true, but scarcely more. 
The inference is that there was nothing odd, nothing 
striking about his manners or personal appearance. 
Living for nearly fifteen consecutive years at Washing- 
ton city, either as Secretary or President, he passed 
from prime to old age in the midst of its inhabitants. 



i 9 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

By these he is best recalled as a handsome man of tall, 
erect figure and placid mien, who rode every day on 
horseback with a colored groom after him ; his dress a 
drab suit, with light pantaloons reaching to the knees, 
a dark beaver hat and white top boots. His hair was 
cut short in front and powdered and gathered into a 
queue behind, and his face smoothly shaved after the 
custom of olden times. For evening costume he wore 
various suits, after the fashion of the day, tending, 
however, to the old style, as became one of his years 
and station. He was strongly built, broad-shouldered, 
and in younger days could bear great strain without 
fatigue. 

A favorite picture represents Monroe in his prime, 
enveloped in a dark, high-cut coat of the period, with 
rolling and indented collar, a waistcoat edged with buff 
lining, and an ample white neck-cloth spreading its 
folds over his chest. The face wears a mild, patient, 
and yet almost sad expression, indicating the struggle 
of a nervous temperament; the eyes, nearly blue, look 
from the canvas with kindness more than penetration; 
and the small, close mouth and dimpled chin learning 
to be firm, the smooth face, the high but not expansive 
forehead and delicate features, all bespeak a refinement 
of nature. Later in life his appearance is said to have 
been less romantic and prepossessing. Stouter, more 
florid, inclined to stoop, his stature by the last years of 
his Presidency might have seemed quite moderate. 
His dress is now described as a little rusty, and his 
countenance wilted with age and study and care ; while, 
in a forehead deeply furrowed, which the hair, as worn, 
partly hid, appeared two distinct arches over the eyes, 
which glimmered sleepily from within their large sock- 
ets. Indeed, Monroe's last years were full of care and 



WASHINGTON IN 1821 195 

anxiety, and at seventy he seemed fourscore. But 
those manners which neither captivated nor overawed 
were the same at his last White House reception as long 
years back, when governor of Virginia; and the same 
awkward but assiduous courtesy which the "British 
Spy" had remarked, was visible through all the polish 
of courtly life; affording one proof among many that 
Monroe never could outgrow his native simplicity. 



The reader is not to measure the festivities of this 
raw little metropolis, which brought together so at- 
tractive a winter society from all parts of the Union, 
by the standard of its own diluted and even desolate 
grandeur. Though it slowly grew and clambered up 
the great trellis placed for its reception, like some neg- 
lected vine which shivers and yet strives to fulfil the 
law of its being, Washington, the nation's only plant, 
had ceased to be an object of enthusiasm to patriot or 
speculator. It had no commerce, its inhabitants 
showed little enterprise, trade was held in disdain by 
the influential, and the spirit of civic co-operation was 
wanting. Nothing could be done for it without the 
assent of Congress ; and being to most intents a south- 
ern city, here might be seen the slave-block and auction- 
room, while scattered huts in remote quarters gave the 
place the air of some negro village. Fine sloping fields 
and ridges, once covered with clustering trees which 
might have made a splendid park but had long since 
been felled for fuel, were disfigured by streets and ave- 
nues only partially opened and blocks of cheap and ugly 
brick houses standing aloof from one another. Penn- 
sylvania Avenue was the chief thoroughfare, its two- 
story buildings serving the double purpose of dwelling 



196 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

and shop. The Capitol and President's mansion were 
almost the only structures really agreeable to the eye, 
nor were these yet finished ; but in the neighborhood of 
the latter were a few pretentious residences. A rural 
neighborhood changing into a civic is rarely attractive, 
nature upturning that art may begin; but stagnation 
just at that transition point makes the loveliest land- 
scape an eyesore. And so it was here. Cattle grazed 
along the public reservations; goats from some lofty 
height scanned the square, carefully plotted, whose 
owners would gladly have sold by the acre for the price 
they had paid by the foot; snakes two feet long wrig- 
gled into a cabinet officer's mansion, and were killed at 
the foot of the staircase. On the broad Potomac, sel- 
dom furrowed by a keel, statesmen swam for daily ex- 
ercise unmolested. By old Maryland records it was 
shown — strange coincidence ! — that part of the land on 
which stood this ambitious city was once called Rome, 
and its creek Tiber ; and hence Moore's sarcastic line, — 

"And what was Goose Creek once is Tiber now." 

Marrying Marcia Burns, the heiress of Washington, 
with whose stubborn father our first President drove a 
negotiation almost as difficult as any Indian treaty, Van 
Ness, once a member of Congress, had identified him- 
self with the place; and improving a square near the 
juncture of the Tiber and Potomac and our new Wash- 
ington obelisk, he built a spacious mansion in the centre 
of the square, not far from the President's house. A 
fine suburban house and grounds, lying just northwest 
of the city, the home originally of the Homeric Barlow, 
was known as "Kalorama." But Barlow himself had 
not stayed there long, nor could Washington greatly at- 
tract literary and studious men as yet. In 1798 every 



WASHINGTON IN 1821 197 

government which would build a house for its resident 
minister might have a free lot; but only Portugal ac- 
cepted the offer, and the lot assigned was not yet built 
upon. So expansive were the distances that it might 
still be said that neighbors had to go through the woods 
to make their visits. Roads were unpaved, badly kept, 
often impassable in winter and spring; and opposite 
the Treasury building might be seen a famous slough, 
into which a carriage-load of statesmen had been emp- 
tied not long since. In very hot weather came myriads 
of flies and vermin ; but by that time Congress had usu- 
ally risen, and few were left except clerks in the govern- 
ment employ, mechanics, tradespeople, and some very 
diligent officials of high grade who bore umbrellas. 
Taverns and saloons were grog-shops, about equally 
disreputable, though Gadsby's, near the Capitol, became 
a hotel of some pretence; and as few Congressmen or 
visitors could own or rent a dwelling, boarding-houses 
were much in demand; and after this fashion public 
men would lodge like a family, leaving their wives at 
home, and making a "mess," as it was called. Each 
boarding-house had its mess, to which no stranger was 
admitted without the common consent and an introduc- 
tion. 

In such a metropolis, where appetites abounded, with 
slim means for gratifying them, the haunts of vice found 
very little gilding. Wretched drinking shops, brothels, 
and gambling-houses abounded; and it seemed as if the 
polluted dregs of other cities were emptied here every 
winter. But theatrical shows and concerts derived 
little patronage from pleasure-seekers amid the round 
of social entertainments at the height of a winter sea- 
son. In 1820, when the city charter was carefully 
amended, much commotion arose over the municipal 



198 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

offices, and the most eminent residents of the place con- 
tended for the honor of serving as "lord mayor;" but 
except for acts which enabled the corporation to drain 
the low grounds and keep streets and alleys in better 
order, Congress manifested very little interest. The 
District militia, a well-trained body, had been of posi- 
tive service during the war. Clumsy provision was 
made for administering local justice; but up to 1830, 
so little revision had been made of the old Maryland or 
Virginia laws in force when cession was made to the 
United States, that one who set fire to a mansion-house 
or stole a horse was liable to be hanged for it. As for 
that only thoroughfare in Washington city worthy of 
the name, the poplar-lined avenue lying between the 
Capitol and the White House, a House Committee was 
debating as late as 1832 whether to permit a pavement 
of round or pounded stones to be laid. By February, 
1830, the United States had here expended upon na- 
tional buildings about $3,229,000, and upon all other 
objects within the District, including streets, avenues, 
squares, a court-house, jails, a penitentiary, and a pub- 
lic burying-ground, less than $187,000. Forced to the 
mean necessity of applying for everything to a busy 
legislature of non-residents, wherein the local tax-pay- 
ers found no representation at all, the District became 
literally a beggar, and begging in vain so often, it sub- 
sided from an eager into a shiftless one. The capital 
city was the nation's only child; surely the parent was 
at fault for rearing an offspring in the pride and pov- 
erty of great expectations. 

Here gathered each winter season a medley of dis- 
tinguished characters, beautiful women, travellers, and 
social celebrities from all parts of the Union. After all, 
there was something cosmopolitan in such a society, 



CENSUS OF 1820 199 



softening the provincial lines, and in the universal wish 
to be pleasant and pleased, encouraging a free-handed 
and even hearty hospitality. The influence of the 
southern aristocracy at this time dominated, but always 
affably and generously unless southern institutions hap- 
pened to be discussed. Fond of treating and apt to be 
profuse, these hosts easily seemed richer than they were. 
It was the exact and thrifty, those who knew how each 
dollar was won and spent, that least suited the habits of 
the place. In order to bear high office at Washington 
and please this gay winter society, one had to be genial 
with everybody, and as for cost, calculate nothing. The 
arrival of Congress was a signal for commencing the 
round of entertainment, which lasted through the ses- 
sion, but chiefly, as is still the custom, between New 
Year's Day and Ash- Wednesday. 



The census of 1820 showed an aggregate population 
in the United States which consisted in round numbers 
of 9,634,000, against 7,240,000 in 18 10; the whites 
numbering 7,862,000, the slaves 1,538,000, and the free 
persons of color 234,000. War, with its usual decima- 
tion by disease and death, and the check it places upon 
matrimony, not to add the failure of immigration for 
some three years in consequence, had brought the rela- 
tive increase on the whole somewhat below the former 
average, though returning peace now repaired all 
breaches very rapidly. Since 181 o six new States had 
been added to the Union, a feat of national fecundity 
without a parallel in our history. This changed in no 
slight degree the adjustment of political forces, into 
which a thousand delicate elements might enter. Al- 
ready was the sceptre of national leadership passing into 



200 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

new hands. Virginia, with all her slaves to swell a 
master's dignity, was at length outnumbered in popula- 
tion by the freemen of New York, a State whose en- 
signs advanced as first in rank and emulous of empire, 
in the material if not the sentimental sense of the word. 
Behind pushed Pennsylvania with sturdy step, crowd- 
ing close upon her late preceptor, and soon, too, to pass 
her by. Ohio, hoydenish in politics, hastened to be 
next in numerical order, ranking the third already, or 
next to Pennsylvania for representative power. Only 
by the count of soul by soul, regardless of color and so- 
cial condition, — a count wholly fallacious for the ad- 
justment of political rank and influence under our con- 
stitution as then applied, — could Virginia, once first, 
claim still to be the second State of the Union; and 
even under so favorable a comparison it was clearly 
written that she would soon sink to the fourth and lower 
still, as one enterprising free State after another out- 
stripped her in the race and passed on. 

New York's rapid advance in wealth and numbers 
was easily accounted for. The constantly increasing 
trade of her great seaport, already, perhaps, the second 
emporium of foreign commerce in the world, was en- 
hanced immensely by the timely adoption of a wise, 
liberal, and for the times immense system of internal 
improvement, all without the aid of the national purse, 
by means of which the whole back country of a State, 
remarkably favored by nature for the united and ex- 
clusive development of its commercial resources, was 
rapidly peopled, and a means of traffic, cheap and expe- 
ditious beyond all precedent, laid open for the products 
of the rising west. What sons admirably qualified for 
public station had done so much for their own State, 
and so little for the Union, as the Clintons and the 



CALHOUN A LEADER 201 

Livingstons of New York ? Aided by Chancellor Liv- 
ingston, Fulton had given to the Hudson and the mod- 
ern world the first steamboat and the first surprising 
instance of quick locomotion. And now to the busy 
Hudson a Clinton was uniting by an artificial water- 
course the waters of Lake Erie; thus making of the 
whole State, as it were, a vast channel through which 
products should pour into the lap of New York City for 
distribution, enriching its trade beyond measure; be- 
sides giving to a hundred towns and villages on the way 
a generous livelihood. 



Calhoun was yet a young man, only forty years of 
age, and though bony and slender, far different in per- 
sonal aspect from that rigid, scornful, and bloodless 
being, who in later life held his State and section spell- 
bound by a mysterious but malignant influence. He 
was one of those dreamy-looking men whose presence 
haunts the imagination like a verse of poetry. With a 
face both thoughtful and handsome, flashing brown 
eyes full of penetration, dark hair waving carelessly 
over his high, broad forehead, an intellect which stimu- 
lated, and most engaging manners, he was fascinating 
to the last degree, and after a method quite his own. 
His views were original and confidently expressed. 
Timidity and doubt seemed no part of his nature. Ad- 
ams and Jackson, both much older men and in some re- 
spects as unlike each other as the poles, felt the charm 
of his intercourse; yet, not without profound distrust 
of his sincerity upon a closer acquaintance. Monroe, 
however, loved him, and one may believe him to have 
been of a lovable and responsive nature until corroded 
and consumed by ambition. Younger men than him- 



202 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

self, those especially who were likely to rise to in- 
fluence, he held by delicate flattery and instilled into 
their minds his political precepts. But his philosophy 
exacted from the pupil a state of mind open somewhat 
to magic and delusion; for he himself led by a chain 
of logic whose end and beginning he had neither the 
patience nor the love of truth, for truth's own sake, to 
search out. His intellect, which was intense and in- 
genious, delighted in novelties, bold contrasts, and 
startling conclusions; but like one who carries a torch 
through a cavern, he took his way heedless of dimen- 
sions or structure. He had been trained in youth too 
quickly, and was launched into public life before mas- 
tering a profession. The drudgery of investigation he 
disliked; but trusted to intuition, the lightning-glance. 
Hence in Calhoun as a statesman great talents and 
great faults grew up together. He has been considered 
pure, upright, faithful to his convictions. He was, 
most unquestionably, a bold and independent thinker; 
and as for morals, had been brought up under strict 
Presbyterian influences, to which were superadded 
those of Yale College, where he took his degree. But 
his convictions were formed upon such quicksands, he 
was so little disposed to search things to the bottom, 
that ambition soon became an infatuation, burning out 
Calhoun's better part, though by a slow process. When 
the fever went down it left his nature passionless, de- 
structive, deadly, mischievous. Now that it began, 
something noble and national could be discovered in his 
ambition ; yet he showed himself lax, wayward, inclined 
to get upon the winning side, and above all to win for 
himself. Adams, who never in the world did Calhoun 
an injury, found him, with the professions of friend- 
ship yet moist upon his lips, just as ready, while thus 



THE HOLY ALLIANCE 203 

fired, to assail him before the public as ever he had done 
Crawford. 



The secret despatches received from our minister at 
London excited in the official circle of Washington a 
profound interest. Rush's conduct was at the same 
time highly approved. "You could not have met Can- 
ning's proposals better," the President wrote him, "if 
you had had the whole American cabinet at your right 
hand." First of all, Monroe by letter consulted l823 
Jefferson and Madison in confidence upon the ° ctober - 
momentous question thus presented. Jefferson with 
quick enthusiasm approved the idea of a joint co-opera- 
tion with Great Britain against the plans of the Al- 
liance in this western hemisphere ; sketching boldly the 
outlines of an American system, not Great Britain's but 
ours, of "keeping out of our land all foreign powers, of 
never permitting those of Europe to intermeddle with 
the affairs of our nations;" and arguing that to draw 
over to our side at this crisis the most powerful member 
of Europe would be to maintain our principle, not to 
depart from it, to prevent instead of provoking war. 
Madison's mind yielded assent less easily to the pro- 
posals of a minister whose roughness he well remem- 
bered; and concurring with Jefferson in the main, 
though cautiously, he vexed his mind again and again 
to discover some astute motive behind Canning's 
smooth approaches. 

Fortified by these opinions, Monroe prepared the 
most remarkable document of his official career ; an an- 
nual message with paragraphs which he well knew 
would be read and pondered over by every cabinet and 
legislative body in Europe and the western world, as 



2o 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

well as by the Congress to whom his message was ad- 
dressed. The draft he showed to his advisers, but con- 
ferred with them calmly, as one who had made up his 
own mind. Wirt was timorous, Calhoun open to con- 
viction, Adams bold as a lion. The news that Cadiz 
had surrendered produced upon Calhoun, at least, a mo- 
mentary panic. But the President, whose experience in 
European diplomacy we should remember was greater 
than that of all his cabinet, felt confident of his ground. 
He had determined neither on the one hand to provoke 
the Alliance by a tone of taunting defiance, nor on the 
other give this country the appearance of taking a posi- 
tion subordinate to Great Britain. As to British pro- 
posals, indeed, it was conceded that Rush's ground was 
the true one. We were stronger, knowing that Great 
Britain opposed the Alliance as we did ; but unless Can- 
ning would pledge his government to recognize South 
American independence no immediate co-operation ap- 
peared possible. 

The President's message of December, 1823, toned 
down from the solemn exordium of the draft, which 
Adams feared would alarm our people like a clap of 
thunder, and seem like a summons to arms, put for- 
ward, therefore, two distinct declarations. One bore 
directly against the plans of hostile intervention cher- 
ished by the Holy Alliance in the flush of victory : "that 
we should consider any attempt on their part to extend 
their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dan- 
gerous to our peace and safety." The other, as a more 
general proposition, involving the rights and interests 
of the United States: "that the American continents, 
by the free and independent condition which they have 
assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be consid- 
ered as subjects for future colonization by any Euro- 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 205 

pean powers." In these two propositions consist the 
celebrated "Monroe doctrine;" a doctrine, we may add, 
which our later statesmen have developed at conven- 
ience, linking it inseparably with the name of the Presi- 
dent who thus pronounced it, and seeing in it what 
many hundred millions of American freemen, in the 
long vista of coming centuries, will still better recog- 
nize, if free institutions are capable of growth and en- 
durance, the sacred stone of chartered liberty in this 
western world. 

This doctrine, so profound of import, was not, we 
apprehend, the sudden creation of individual thought, 
but the result rather of slow processes in our public 
mind, which had been constantly intent upon problems 
of self-government, and intensely observant of our con- 
tinental surroundings; though carried forward, no 
doubt, like other ideas in the colonial epoch, by the en- 
ergy and clearer conviction of statesmen who could 
foresee and link conceptions into a logical chain. Neu- 
trality as to European affairs, freedom from all en- 
tangling alliances with the Old World, was the legacy 
of experience which Washington bequeathed to his suc- 
cessors. This might have seemed at first to discourage 
all external influence, and remit our Union to the selfish 
and isolated pursuit of its own interests. But the an- 
nexation of Louisiana proved that the Union itself was 
destined to expand over an uncertain area of this con- 
tinent. And when, inspired by our example, the Span- 
ish colonies of the American continent were seen one 
after another to shake off the yoke of the parent coun- 
try, and spontaneously assert their independence, the 
philanthropic leaders — and none among them so quick- 
ly or so persistently as Jefferson — began to predict the 
fraternal co-operation in the future of these free repub- 



206 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

lies, all modelled alike, in a common scheme for self- 
preservation which should shut out Europe, its rulers 
and its systems of monarchy, forever from this hemis- 
phere. For by such means only could the germ of self- 
government expand, and the luxuriant growth of this 
hardy plant make it impossible that the monarchical 
idea should ever strike a deep root in American soil. 
By 1823, then, the new maxim as a fundamental one 
was by no means unfamiliar to our political leaders. 
Sympathy for sister-republics, as well as self-interest, 
imposed upon the United States the announcement of 
that maxim. When liberty struggled in America we 
were not — we could not be — neutral. The time of an- 
nouncement and the choice of expression, nevertheless, 
awaited events. Pending that announcement, Clay, 
the ardent champion of the Spanish American cause, 
made speeches in his own State, which brought out the 
principle in terms not less striking than any which 
Adams has preserved in his Diary. The time for the 
announcement was when, following close upon our ac- 
ceptance of these American republics as independent 
States, the Holy Alliance threatened to overturn them. 
Did a President in the bosom confidence of Jefferson 
and Madison, who had conducted the portfolio of State 
for years before his latest promotion, need to take his 
ideas from any subordinate? Allowing, therefore, to 
Adams his full praise as an adviser in this emergency, 
and giving to the choice of words for defining a well- 
understood policy whatever merit it may deserve, we 
may remark that the calm, dull phraseology of this 
message is sufficiently in the Presidential vein to de- 
serve the epithet original in the most liberal sense usu- 
ally applied to State papers. It was the courage of a 
great people personified in a firm chief magistrate that 



THE MONROE DOCTRINE 207 

put the fire into those few momentous though moderate 
sentences, and made them glow like the writing at Bel- 
shazzar's feast. 

Monroe meant neither that the United States should 
monopolize the New World, nor that we should fight 
single-handed the battles of sister-republics; a policy 
of consummate statesmanship could not in such hands 
have been perverted into one of consummate statecraft. 
The danger was near our door and he repelled it. 
Threat was opposed by threat, and a course of policy 
laid open whose direction the future would determine. 
It is not, then, the genius of creating which belongs to 
Monroe, but, as with most great administrators, the 
genius of apprehending, of taking the immediate re- 
sponsibility ; and rarely, if ever, has responsibility been 
assumed, under the constitutional system of these Unit- 
ed States, by any Executive so utterly apart from the 
sanction of the legislature. A Presidential dictum has 
passed into the fundamental law of American diplo- 
macy. And this crowning effort of Monroe's career 
contrasted well with that to which it stood opposed ; for 
the main motive was to shelter honorably these tender 
blossoms of liberty on kindred soil from the cold Sibe- 
rian blast of despotism. 



With tariff debates and the tariff act of 1824 the 
vista of new national parties opens. Not yet did Clay 
and Webster come into that alliance, which in com- 
bining the sympathetic with the intellectual school of 
oratory, the power of exhortation with that of match- 
less argument, was the most remarkable ever made in 
any deliberative body of this western world. Clay 
could introduce and manage a bill or resolution, while 



208 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Webster made the best speech in favor of adopting it. 
Both inclined to a strong central government and the 
broad construction of national powers, though brought 
up in opposite political schools, — Clay as a Republican, 
Webster as a Federalist. In influence and methods 
they were the complement of each other. Clay was 
ardent, sympathetic, a man to be loved and fought for, 
in spite of all blemishes. If he missed fire once, he 
was to be tried again; he made the warmest friends 
and the bitterest enemies. Webster, on the other hand, 
seldom made enemies, standing, as he did, on a higher 
and more solitary plane, less approachable by friend or 
foe. The quality of his greatness was supremely in- 
tellectual ; men thought him infallible, almost superhu- 
man ; worship was the frenzy he excited in the popular 
breast, and thousands who literally idolized him be- 
lieved him free from the common temptations of 
public life and the self-absorption of its ambitions. In 
these purer years of his career his soar was like the 
eagle's and his rising sun a glorious birth. No one 
who has seen and heard Daniel Webster in his prime 
can liken his oratory or his personal presence to that 
of any other mortal man. Chaste, simple, compact, but 
strong, moving in one grand and steady current, on- 
ward, right onward, his speech gathered volume as he 
warmed with the theme, until a magnificent torrent bore 
down all before it. The stream that widens to a river 
or the regiment that swells to a host — such metaphors 
only can describe his progress to a climax. No man 
so rose to the grandeur of an occasion. But however 
impassioned the effect produced, the orator was himself 
cool, self-controlled, and always deliberate; for he 
seemed somehow to possess Prospero's magic art, so as 
to create a tempest by a wave of the wand, confident 



WEBSTER'S ORATORY 209 

that he could calm it when he was ready. His power 
of statement was remarkable. Force and utterance he 
relied upon as qualities to produce conviction, but clear- 
ness equally. His strong and rugged sentences, Anglo- 
Saxon in the phrasing and choice of words, relieved 
the burden of argument in the loftier passages by bold 
imagery draped in the language of the master poets, — 
Milton above all, — of whom Webster showed himself 
a close student, without the slightest appearance of ped- 
antry ; not only quoting, as he might, a couplet, so as to 
be brief, but so transfusing the substance of immortal 
verse into the diction of his own speech that a prose ut- 
terance rang out with the music of a sublime harmony. 
Of statesmen no one but Burke has left speeches so 
worthy of rank among the English prose classics ; and 
while Burke, as tradition tells us, rose too often above 
those he addressed and got tedious, Webster spoke to 
the time and occasion, and carried his audience to the 
close. The views which Webster announced were of 
the broad and elevating kind, and instead of picking 
an adversary's speech to pieces he preferred to set forth 
the main facts and principles as he viewed them, and 
rest his argument upon vital and essential points, which 
the luminous process of his mind enabled him to dis- 
cover and set apart. If there was art in all this, he 
was discreet enough to conceal it, and no one opposed 
to him could complain that he was utterly uncandid, 
still less uncivil. To crown all, Webster's overpower- 
ing presence and manner, as every American knows, 
gave weight to the commonest remark which might es- 
cape his lips, and deepened immeasurably the effect of 
an eloquence which surely needed the aid of no mere- 
tricious trick or illusion. To this grave, swarthy, mas- 
sive, and majestic lion of a man, who moved among a 



210 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

thousand with an easy consciousness of superiority, 
mental and physical, and who, in the plenitude of his 
powers, could not stop before a shop-window without 
drawing a crowd to gaze, awe-stricken, upon him, the 
epithets "Olympian," "god-like," were freely applied, 
and with the most obvious aptitude. Had he stood in 
the market square, raised an arm, and frozen into 
silence, his erect figure would have been accepted as the 
bronze ideal of statesman and defender of the constitu- 
tion. Clay's agile craft seemed light in comparison 
when this great American man-of-war bore down, full 
rigged, before the wind, with spreading sail and pon- 
derous tonnage, crowding all canvas, and flying the 
stars and stripes fearlessly at the fore. Those stars 
and stripes were very dear to Webster, for love of the 
Union gave the best inspiration to his public career. He 
was in every fibre an American patriot; and entering 
public life in the service of the United States, on that 
broad altar, to use his own expression, did he dedicate 
himself. In temperament he was conservative, like the 
Massachusetts of that day, and of that juridical type, 
moreover, which would keep liberty closely protected 
by law. His whole soul abhorred radical and violent 
change ; nevertheless he progressed. That government 
is based upon property was, as he asserted, a funda- 
mental maxim; and to benefit property and increase 
the general wealth and prosperity of the nation consti- 
tuted perhaps the chief scope of his long statesman- 
ship. 

Webster inclined naturally to indolence. But his 
aspirations were noble, and when aroused his native 
energy carried him along with great celerity. Gifted 
with a broad, analytic mind which acquired rapidly, 
grasped principles, and sifted all details, he treasured 



WEBSTER THE STATESMAN 211 

all that was worth remembering ; and what he knew he 
could tell clearly, without risking himself to tell more 
or venturing beyond his depth. Like other great law- 
yers, he could not only investigate by the best means 
when the point arose, but understood perfectly how to 
absorb the labors of other men. Love of nature and 
rural sports enriched his personal experience of life, 
which was great and varied ; and carrying, as he wan- 
dered on some lonely excursion through the woods, the 
secret habit of composition, he would, pole in hand, ar- 
range the order of some new oration, or address an 
eloquent passage to the trout which he jerked out of 
the brook. Some of his greatest speeches, which 
seemed to spring from the brain in full panoply, were 
constructed from memoranda composed in leisure mo- 
ments and then laid aside. 

He was bred and born a Puritan Federalist ; and his 
politics showed always the peculiar training of that 
school, which, in Boston especially, had a decided tinge 
of Anglicism. To Gore and other leaders of that party 
who had befriended his youth Webster owned a per- 
sonal obligation; but he rose superior to the ancient 
bigotry, and Jefferson, to whom he paid a visit about 
this time, spoke with high praise of him. Webster had 
come to Congress once more thoroughly independent in 
politics; a middleman, so to speak, and in the present 
disordered condition of parties and principles, he easily 
made himself felt. 



Peace, prosperity, and the revival of patriotic feel- 
ing over Lafayette's visit marked the close of this re- 
markable administration ; the last in fact which linked 
our people with the Revolutionary age. Monroe's pol- 



212 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

icy had been a broad one. Within eight years the gov- 
ernment had made great strides towards establishing 
our interests and empire in this continent ; we had add- 
ed the Floridas, planted our flag firmly on the Pacific 
coast, befriended, first of all nations, the cause of 
Spain's revolting colonies. To the disdain once shown 
by European powers had succeeded respect for a nation 
which had vindicated its policy through peace and war. 
Upon the enlargement of the map of this Union beyond 
the confines of the old thirteen, the name of Monroe 
stands indelibly inscribed. Louisiana spoke, therefore, 
with a gratitude peculiarly filial in the resolutions of 
sympathy offered by its legislature upon his retirement. 
Other legislatures, those, for instance, of Maine, Massa- 
chusetts, New Hampshire, New York, Alabama, Mary- 
land and South Carolina, dwelt more generally upon 
his impartial and dignified course, his essential services, 
and long tried patriotism. Tokens of approval reached 
the retiring President from men of all political shades. 
The hoary John Adams congratulated him on the sin- 
gular felicity of an administration "which, as far as I 
know, has been without fault." And Marshall wrote 
in similar strain, "The retrospect is not darkened by a 
single spot." 

Thus peacefully glided to its eight-years' close one of 
the most serene, dignified, and at the same time success- 
ful administrations the world ever saw. For our 
people this respite from party strife was a beautiful, 
though passing episode. Party men no longer, they 
seemed to themselves national men, Americans in a 
greater sense than they had dreamed possible. The 
whole mechanism of society moved in perfect order. 
The democracy ruled, but it was a democracy in which 
jealousies found no root, and the abler and more vir- 



MONROE RETIRES 213 

tuous of the community took the lead. None needed to 
despair ; all were cheerful and hopeful. Busy and pros- 
pering, each fell happily into his own routine, and was 
well disposed to those above or below him. To the 
oppressed of other nations we shone with a steady 
flame, that our light might be a help and comfort. A 
breath dissolves this picture; and fiercer passions rule 
once more the hearts of men. That this ideal govern- 
ment of the people had felt the touch of consecration 
for the moment was not, however, to be doubted. The 
people were guided by the silent influence of a lofty ex- 
ample, and walked safely in the clear upper air. 



CHAPTER XII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

§ I. Period of Nineteenth Congress. March 4, 1825-March 3, 
1827. — § II. Period of Twentieth Congress. March 4, 1827- 
March 3, 1829. 

THE era of good feeling was precisely coeval 
with Monroe's double term of office. Its im- 
pulse, however, in the quickening of the na- 
tional spirit was carried to a far later date. Nor 
did party virulence break out into anything like an 
angry and indecent expression before Lafayette had re- 
embarked for France and a new Congress listened to 
the new President's first annual message. Party lines, 
nevertheless, began to be drawn for 1828, and the 
political elements to re-combine the moment Monroe 
retired; and a new and formidable coalition of the 
disappointed candidates threatened, thwarted, and then 
overthrew his successor. Hence the most tranquil of 
administrations was followed, like a thunderclap, by 
one of the stormiest. 

New national parties must inevitably have arisen. 
But two causes at this time hastened their formation : 
( 1 ) The clear and vigorous policy which Adams chose 
to personify in himself; (2) the peculiar circumstances 
attending his elevation and the choice of his cabinet. 
These causes, operating together and continually, drove 
all opponents of the new administration into a natural 



NEW PARTY IDEALS 215 

coalition, forcing a division line ; popular elements, nat- 
urally sluggish, leaped into new relations, and a furious 
struggle for the mastery was the consequence, personal 
in its inception, but not without developing differences 
of political principle, as well as of taste or temper, as 
it proceeded. 

As a thorn in the flesh of an unpopular administra- 
tion, Randolph was not to be despised ; and on this ac- 
count, perhaps, Calhoun bore gently with him, watching 
from his chair the flow of poesy and vituperation which 
the rules of the Senate, so he alleged, forbade him to 
interrupt. 

Did Calhoun, as he sat rigid and statue-like in the 
Vice-President's chair, listening with pale face, lips 
compressed, and scornful eyes, his thick hair brushed 
boldly back from his imperious forehead, extract ideas 
from this tangled monologue for his own political guid- 
ance? And had he already begun to reconstruct his 
theory of American government so as to place the State 
above the nation ? At all events, it is claimed by Ran- 
dolph's latest biographer* that Randolph himself, even 
while despised in his own eyes, organized the south as 
a distinct power, and made Calhoun his convert. With 
like foresight, it may be added, Calhoun and Randolph, 
the later and earlier sophist of the pro-slavery school, 
took care to attach to their persons young men who 
were likely to rise to influence in their several homes, 
and, after a fascinating strain which pictured slavehold- 
ers as chained to some necessity by a fate which they 
might deplore but could not avert, set forth the dark 
issue as one of life or death, wherein every sentiment 
of chivalry and humanity required two races to be kept, 
the one above and the other below the other. Each 
♦See Henry Adams's John Randolph. 



216 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

set the example of kindness to slaves, and appreciated 
heartily the simple and childish tenderness which was 
yielded in return. Each half inclined to emancipate; 
but each, with characteristic temper, spurned the 
thought that a southerner's best impulse should be aided 
from without. What existed must continue to exist, 
so they argued, and to preserve the existence of slavery 
was their own right ; for never in history had two dis- 
tinct races occupied the soil together, except as master 
and slave. State rights afforded thus a barricade 
whenever the south should be driven to cover; and to 
consolidate southern influence and the slave power, 
either for offensive or defensive warfare, as circum- 
stances might demand, was the work which Randolph 
began and Calhoun completed. 



John Quincy Adams, though now at the age of sixty, 
maintained by temperate habits a full vigor of mind and 
body. His figure was short and thick, but regular ex- 
ercise kept it from corpulence. His round, bald head, 
filled, as the forehead showed, with an active and capa- 
cious brain, was set firmly upon square shoulders, con- 
veying at once the impression of honest and fearless 
dogmatism. His eyes were small, black, and piercing, 
discerning selfish motives at a glance, however covered 
up by cunning and hypocrisy, and yet too ready to see 
the faulty part of men and believe the worst of them, 
unwilling to indulge harmless flattery or be blinded by 
good nature; while a troublesome rheum gave some- 
times a ludicrous pathos to their severity of expression 
as though he wept. Under a fringe of thin gray hair 
and side-whiskers stood out his firm cheek-bones, large 
mouth and chin, the whole expression of the face that 



THE TWO ADAMSES 217 

of self-respect and resolution. To glance at a good 
portrait of this man is to feel positive that he had his 
opinion and was prepared to state it. In one picture 
his hand holds a book, with fingers at the very page and 
passage wanted ; in another his outstretched arm plants 
a cane, as though to pin his postulate fast to solid 
earth. 

A family resemblance is traceable between the second 
and sixth Presidents, and at the same time striking 
differences, both of character and method of adminis- 
tration. Both the Adamses had dignified aims and a 
just sense of public duty; both looked upon the Presi- 
dency as the highest grade of public honor, to be 
reached by a long, laborious, and honorable approach; 
a prize to be not less deserved than desired. Both were 
trained civilians and students of political systems, hav- 
ing illustrious claims upon the common gratitude. But 
with infinite preparation, both proved unsuccessful po- 
litical leaders, unsuccessful Presidents, and were cast 
aside on the nearest opportunity, chiefly because of a 
peculiar temper, such as unfits one for managing or 
being managed, but leaves him an individual contending 
in the midst of surrounding circumstances. Strangely 
unfortunate circumstances were those in which each ac- 
cepted the burden of exalted station ; but such was the 
strength of personal character in either instance, that 
the people learned to honor those they had thrown 
down. Of these two sons of America, John Adams 
was the more humane and generous, and John Quincy 
Adams the more scholarly. The former felt the limita- 
tions of a British-born colonist, the subject of a king, 
though time and experience moulded him into a Repub- 
lican; the latter was a Republican by instinct and con- 
viction. Adams the elder had a noble heart and went 



218 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

by its impulses. He clung to his friends, cherished 
strong likes and dislikes, quarrelled and made up, loved 
his family, and, when things went pleasantly, gave his 
light humor full play. He was a man of foibles, and 
erratic often, under the influence of vanity or wounded 
pride. But John Quincy Adams, constant in domestic 
duties, and a model husband, son, and father, found 
scarcely a tender tie outside his home circle, and all his 
humor was sardonic, like that of a misanthrope. Both 
were irritable and impatient, ill-disposed to advice, 
sufficient unto themselves ; but the elder was irascible, 
bursting out like a thunder-storm and then yielding to 
sunshine, while the younger, who better controlled his 
feelings and kept himself under rigid discipline, did not 
disclose infirmity of temper so much as a cold, unsym- 
pathetic manner, which could make a scornful utterance 
terribly bitter, far more so, indeed, oftentimes, than 
he was aware of. Neither had tact in statesmanship ; 
both despised little arts ; but the father, who theorized 
against democracy, was in his day loved by the people 
and thwarted by the politicians, while the son, whose 
theories were liberal enough, could dispel a rivalry 
better than the dense weight of unpopularity which for- 
ever enveloped him. The elder erred the more often 
from impulse, the younger from a want of it; and yet 
reflection, or a returning sense of justice, prompted 
John Quincy Adams to many a considerate and disin- 
terested act which from the world was hidden. In 
business method, punctiliousness, the supervision of de- 
partment business, the first Adams failed ; while in these 
respects the second may be held up as a model Presi- 
dent; but hesitation to remove, to maintain a needful 
discipline, was their common failing in the Executive 
office. Neither had the faculty of organizing ; but each 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 219 

as a leader left political elements to coalesce as they 
might. To rule through subordinates and keep up a 
loyal, compact administration was beyond them; and 
still more, to keep the majority bearing up the whole 
weight ; for each, with all his study of comparative pol- 
itics, carried something of the doctrinaire into affairs, 
and though strong in great points was weak in the 
small ones. Both, in fine, had burning convictions, but 
the father's convictions were those of youth and prac- 
tical benevolence ; the son's, on the other hand, of serious 
study, a morose disposition, and crabbed old age ; these 
guided to independence and union, those, by making 
the north courageous, to fratricide and civil war, and 
yet through all, as we may hope, to a higher conception 
of liberty and equal rights. As President the two 
Adamses passed quickly out among the failures of the 
age, their best deeds not long remembered; but as 
fearless men on the floor of an American Congress, 
stirring the blood, forcing conviction by example, and 
compelling willing or unwilling attention, they stand 
on the canvas the most vivid figures of two remarkable 
epochs of American history full sixty years apart. John 
Adams stood among the immortals in youth as John 
Quincy Adams did in old age. 

So far as education and the experience of foreign 
courts and cabinet can make one a chief magistrate, no 
one was ever better qualified for President of the United 
States than John Quincy Adams. His training for 
that office began in precocious youth, and under the 
watchful direction of parents whose pride as well as 
their love was bound up in him. Nothing that the 
fame and influence of John Adams could accomplish — 
and in those days traditions and family influence were 
very powerful — was omitted, that a favorite son might 



220 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

be set on the high road to public preferment. The son 
himself responded early and constantly to these efforts ; 
he developed ambition, talent, studiousness, and an in- 
domitable perseverance. His daily life was regulated 
with the utmost precision ; not an hour of the day was 
wasted. He rose when his chronometer pointed a cer- 
tain hour, and dressed by the light of his taper; in 
regimen and exercise he calculated to a nicety what 
would keep him in physical tone for the labors each day 
imposed and carry him the full span of a great public 
career ; business, usually of the diplomatic kind, divided 
the time with books, literary composition, and whatever 
else might serve for self-culture; bedtime approached, 
and happy was he if no social hilarity kept him up 
beyond the regular hour. With so perfect a chart of 
daily existence formed in early life, and, like civil gov- 
ernment itself, capable of amendment or remodelling 
as experience and the change of circumstances might 
suggest, but never to be abandoned, each obligation of 
life was punctiliously regarded; and among these obli- 
gations, the social one, which in court circles consists 
so largely in the interchange of cards, receptions, routs, 
balls, and the like ceremonious civilities, found its place. 
But where so much was laid out to be done and so little 
left to happen, the gentler hospitalities and graces of 
life were the most likely to suffer. Adams weeded the 
garden of his morals with the utmost care; his intro- 
spection was constant; he took physical exercise but 
little recreation ; he allowed himself no vices, no indul- 
gences. He never gave way to the dissipations of 
youth, for he had no youth. As part of his machinery 
of self-improvement he opened a Diary in 1794, — in- 
deed, his earlier efforts in this direction began when he 
was only twelve years old, — and kept it almost continu- 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 221 

ously until within a few years of his death. Out of 
all this self-discipline and public experience, beginning 
in early youth, which was confined chiefly to the artifi- 
cial surroundings of European courts or of our pseudo- 
court at Washington, developed a character whose 
unyielding Puritanism, always the strongest element in 
spite of all that mingling with the world could do, gave 
it a sombre and unsocial cast. He grew up to be a lover 
of books and political philosophy more than a lover of 
his kind. Self-love, self-absorption, was his great de- 
fect of character; although he meant to be just by all 
men, and as a statesman the good of the public was, 
doubtless, the grand purpose of his career. By the 
time he became President he had grown close in money 
matters, close in family affection, and a constant nig- 
gard of his hours, — nothing annoyed him more than 
to be obliged to waste so much precious time in listening 
to foolish and frivolous people. Then, too, he was stiff 
and unsusceptible. He enjoyed the seclusion of his 
home and study, where he might prepare by himself the 
immortal task ; and in that task he cared to consult only 
Him who prescribed it. 

Adams had in his day met more great men than per- 
haps any other American of his age; yet among men 
great or small he had hardly an intimate friend ; from 
boyhood he had mingled constantly in society, enter- 
taining and being entertained, yet he could not make a 
guest feel at ease in his company. Light compliments 
he rarely exchanged. If he thought a jest, it left his 
mouth a sarcasm. He was earnest, but had no gen- 
erous sense of humor. When a common voter came 
up with his plain but hearty salute, Adams turned him 
off with an ill-suited response, uttered in so harsh and 
jarring a tone that it sounded like a malediction. His 



222 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

iciness of manner repelled even where he invited ap- 
proaches. Circumspect, cautious, distrustful, his habit 
was to receive but not communicate. In short, his way 
to distinction was won not by courting popularity but 
by compelling respect; and at every step he took a foe 
would start up. He judged of contemporaries harshly, 
as his Diary shows ; looked at the seamy side of human 
nature; and suffering great hindrance from his want 
of tact, he judged bitterly enough of those who thrived 
by means of it. 

But, popular or unpopular, who could better have 
been leaned upon at this hour than one so eminent in 
the qualities of a statesman ? For to great talents, in- 
formation, and experience in affairs, Adams united un- 
ceasing industry and perseverance, besides facility of 
execution and a wholesome temperate life. He had a 
high standard of public and private virtue, and was 
conscientious in his dealings. Nevertheless, Adams 
had faults as an Executive fatal to a successful admin- 
istration. We speak not of his infirmity of temper ; for 
on the occasions which had most tried his patience he 
well sustained the dignity of his station, and drew up 
a message so mild upon French spoliations that Clay 
protested that one might as well have announced those 
claims as abandoned. Nothing but the outrageous as- 
saults of Congress in the latter part of his term drove 
him from the good resolution to curb tongue and pen 
with which he guardedly set out. But Adams, though 
a statesman, was no politician ; and no one can read the 
lesson of his failure and hold arts of management longer 
in contempt. He was in the most genuine sense the 
scholar in politics. So far from organizing the sup- 
port which was far from sufficient when he entered 
upon his office, he let what he had fritter away through 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 223 

inattention or an unwillingness to make the effort to at- 
tach it. As to a policy, instead of considering how much 
the times would bear, proposing simply what might be 
carried, and avoiding needless hostilities, he blocked out 
grand but impracticable projects, as though his mission 
lay in convincing posterity; and then, leaving all to 
Providence, and nothing to his personal influence with 
the legislature, he carried nothing of consequence, but 
raised a whirlwind of opposition. Nor did he keep 
office-holders under discipline while conducting the pub- 
lic business, and make the machinery of his adminis- 
tration work to one end, but left those who honored 
and those who were pulling down his administration, 
as well as the indifferent, all tugging in the same har- 
ness. If Clay asked the removal of some virulent 
office-holder who was working against the administra- 
tion and weakening it, the President objected by some 
general maxim ; his line was not drawn at faithful ser- 
vice, with neutrality in politics; and even when frauds 
at the Philadelphia custom-house brought scandal upon 
his government, he hesitated to make a precedent of dis- 
placing the officers there. Various other instances 
might be cited. There was a curious timidity notice- 
able here : that of a liberal disposition in politics, some 
would say; that of conscious guilt that his own place 
had been corruptly acquired, said others; but history 
should pronounce it a constitutional weakness. For 
firmness and sound discretion in exercising the removal 
power and maintaining the morals of the service may 
be found in a governor, a general, a corporate manager, 
or even a mayor, sooner than in the best-read scholar 
or diplomatist who has passed his prime without ever 
having been really responsible for subordinates. He 
admitted that an officer should be honest and com- 



224 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

petent, and, on the whole, not disloyal to his chief ; but 
he put upon himself such a burden of proof before he 
would remove or ask a resignation that discipline was 
really impracticable, nor did he seem unhappy that it 
should be so. 

How incongruous a cabinet Adams meant at first to 
form this writer has shown, as also his prime error in 
selecting a Secretary of State. His ideal was a high one : 
he meant to administer, not to manage; to administer 
for the people, not for a party ; to carry out his plans by 
a policy which the people themselves would spontaneous- 
ly sustain. Of his ability to conquer by this ideal he 
felt at the outset confident, over-confident. He orig- 
inated ideas, was set and stubborn in his own views, 
as well as fearless, and hence yielded to advice rather 
than changed his convictions. A sublimated strain 
ran through his official utterances, and the earlier ones 
most of all. But his standard was too rigid, too ele- 
vated, while at the same time he clung pertinaciously 
to his own maxims and methods. This his cabinet ad- 
visers soon saw. The course they took was a curious 
and yet a needful one. They obtained permission to 
scrutinize the draft of his annual message by them- 
selves and minute the passages they objected to before 
discussing them with him, thus enabling themselves to 
concentrate criticism and impress their objections. It 
was a mark of his just disposition that he yielded to 
their wishes on this point, at the same time almost re- 
proaching himself for doing so. Their nervousness 
was lessened when he announced that general recom- 
mendations should be confined to his first and last mes- 
sages. The fear of alienating Virginia had not in- 
duced him to tone down his expressions in favor of 
national improvements and a university, as though the 



ADAMS AS PRESIDENT 225 

existing constitution sanctioned them ; and when asked 
to say something soothing to South Carolina, he bluntly 
refused, because South Carolina had placed an uncon- 
stitutional law upon her statute book relating to the 
blacks, and would not repeal it. In his anxiety to be 
upright Adams would make himself needlessly severe. 
But the effect of his watchful, even morbid self-dis- 
cipline, was felt by those in his constant confidence, and 
his wish to do right kept their intercourse smooth. "I 
had fears of Mr. Adams's temper and disposition," 
wrote Clay in 1828, "but I must say that they have not 
been realized; and I have found in him, since I have 
been associated with him in the Executive government, 
as little to censure or condemn as I could have expected 
in any man." 

No President ever refused so ungraciously to stretch 
a point, however slight, for the sake of doing a per- 
sonal favor to anybody ; at the same time, no President, 
considering his surrounding circumstances, ever stood 
so much in need of doing little acts to make himself 
popular. He would not attend the Maryland cattle 
show when invited, and set a precedent for being 
claimed as part of such exhibitions; nor in declining 
could he conceal his honest reasons ; for to such a mind 
official conduct resolved itself into a series of proposi- 
tions, and everything was to be decided upon mental 
argument. The decision was usually in favor of non- 
action. When asked to exert his influence in the choice 
of a Senator from one of the States he was angry, as 
he might well have been. He would not give money 
to aid a political canvass, nor put his name upon a sub- 
scription paper. When the head of a military school 
marched his pupils to the White House he would not 
make them a speech, because he suspected the visit was 



226 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

a piece of quackery to get the seminary puffed into no- 
tice in the public prints. He refused to answer a 
campaign slander, even when constituents asked his 
explanation; but we should observe that the easy ex- 
pedient of interviewing had not thus early been adopted 
by the press. Neither his taste nor principles permitted 
him to electioneer by showing himself to the people; but 
here he yielded something to pressure, for he passed 
through Philadelphia and Baltimore, the canvass being 
a very critical one for his party, and really enjoyed the 
crowds and handshaking. He would not meet the 
foes of the administration on their own ground, nor 
try to bring presses to his support. "I have observed," 
he says, "the tendency of our electioneering to venality, 
and shall not encourage it." All this honest obstinacy 
and rigid adherence to rule might have made some 
Presidents vastly popular; nor is it likely that with 
more suavity of manner and a more accommodating 
temper Adams could have turned the tide which set 
so strongly against him. He had at the start volun- 
tarily taken odds too great for any President who owed 
something to himself and his party ; and this, after all, 
was the prime source of his unpopularity. 

At the opening of the Chesapeake and Ohio canal, 
our President discovered with pleasure how a charac- 
teristic act which strikes the fancy suddenly may touch 
the deepest chord of the occasion. He took the spade 
to break the ground; but his strokes made no impres- 
sion, because the large stump of a tree was beneath the 
surface. He then threw off his coat, applied the spade 
once more, and brought up a shovelful of earth. The 
loud shout which burst forth from the spectators 
showed that they were roused by this incident more than 
by all the rhetoric of the day. For once an electric 



ADAMS AS PRESIDENT 227 

sympathy between himself and his audience was estab- 
lished, and he enjoyed the sensation; but it was a life- 
long maxim with him not to be sensitive to transient 
popular symptoms, but to let them bubble and work 
off, and look rather to ultimate than the immediate 
effects of public opinion. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

FIRST ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JACKSON. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-first Congress. March 4, 1829-March 3, 
1831. — § II. The United States in 1831.— § III. Period of 
Twenty-second Congress. March 4, 1831-March 3, 1833. 

THERE seemed to the staid and dignified social 
leaders of the capital something 
like a sudden irruption of barbari- M j53i 4# 
ans upon the little Rome on the day Andrew 
Jackson was sworn in as President. * 'Hurrah for 
Jackson !" had been the cry on the streets ever since his 
arrival, and, as Webster expresses it, the city was "full 
of speculation and speculators." Such crowds of vis- 
itors had called upon him daily at the tavern where he 
lodged, that his committee of arrangements were very 
anxious to have the White House ready in season for 
the 4th of March reception, for the guests would have 
broken down the stairways and made havoc of the 
rooms at such pent-up quarters as Gadsby's. The day 
of inauguration was warm and spring-like. A great 
crowd, numbering not less than 10,000, blocked up the 
vicinity of the eastern portico of the Capitol, where the 
ceremonies were to take place; repressed and kept at 
a proper distance by a ship's cable, which stretched 
across about two-thirds of the way up the long flight 
of steps in front. This was the first time that noble 
entrance, with its columns, one for each State of the 
Union, stood ready for use in such ceremonies. Jack- 



THE PEOPLE'S DAY 229 

son's tall form, as it emerged at high noon from among 
those columns, was the signal for shouts from the spec- 
tators which rent the air. Vice-President Calhoun had 
at 11 o'clock called the Senate to order and renewed 
his official oath. Jackson entered the Senate Chamber 
shortly before twelve, and at the appointed time the 
procession of dignitaries went out to the portico. 

The inaugural address was brief, fervid in expres- 
sion, but non-committal except in a promise or rather 
threat of reform. "The recent demonstration of public 
sentiment inscribes on the list of executive duties, in 
characters too legible to be overlooked, the task of 
reform; which will require particularly the correction 
of those abuses that have brought the patronage of the 
federal government into conflict with the freedom of 
elections, and the counteraction of those causes which 
have disturbed the rightful course of appointment, and 
have placed or continued power in unfaithful or in- 
competent hands." At the close of this address the 
oath of office was administered by the venerable Chief 
Justice. 

Out of respect to his wife's memory, Jackson had 
signified a wish to avoid all parade on this occasion. 
He rode on horseback from the Capitol to the White 
House after the ceremony was over, a great crowd fol- 
lowing him, already encouraged by their success in 
forcing the barricades at the east front to shake hands 
with the man of the people. A lively writer of the 
day portrays the scene which followed at the palace. 
"The President was literally pursued by a motley con- 
course of people, riding, running helter-skelter, striving 
who should first gain admittance into the Executive 
mansion, where it was understood that refreshments 
were to be distributed." The halls of the White House 



2 3 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

were filled with a disorderly rabble, common people 
forcing their way into the saloons and mingling with 
the foreigners and distinguished citizens who sur- 
rounded the President. China and glass were broken 
in their struggle to get at the ices and cakes, though 
punch and other drinkables had been carried out in 
tubs and buckets to them ; but had it been in hogsheads 
it would have been insufficient, besides unsatisfactory, 
to the mob who claimed equality in all things. "The 
confusion became more and more appalling. At one 
moment the President, who had retreated until he was 
pressed against the wall of the apartment, could only 
be secured against serious danger by a number of gen- 
tlemen linking arms and forming themselves into a 
barrier. It was then that the windows were thrown 
open, and the living torrent found an outlet. It was 
the People's day, the People's President, and the people 
would rule." 



Inauguration day passed, but the mob of strange 
faces was still to be seen hovering about. Strangers 
filled the anteroom and lobbies and all public places, 
though making less free henceforth with the White 
House apartments, and resolving themselves more into 
knots of politicians, most of whom compared notes 
freely and with jovial good nature, like men who know 
not how soon a fellow-struggler may get what he wants 
and be in a position to lend a helping hand. This was 
not the people all-ruling, but the people after office. A 
great and hungry multitude swarmed in the city, raven- 
ing up and down from morning to night; "too many 
to be fed without a miracle." The newspaper corps 
comprised a great part of this force, and it seemed as if 



THE SPOILS OF OFFICE 231 

every Jackson editor in the land had come to quarter 
upon the government, as though unable to make a de- 
cent living out of his press. 

The only line of policy clearly foreshadowed when 
Jackson took the oath of office was "to reward his 
friends and punish his enemies ;" and this he relentlessly 
pursued, whether the victim was treated with anger or 
courtesy. At the same time parasites gathered about 
him, who fed his jealousy and his desire for revenge. 
It was impossible that he should judge of the facts 
calmly and act upon a careful examination. He kin- 
dled at every spark. His mind was incapable of that 
mature and impartial investigation which alone enables 
one to reach just conclusions, and impulse controlled 
his decision. But Jackson's intuitions were keen : a 
glance of his searching eye told him more of a man 
than volumes of testimony ; and yet intuitions will lead 
astray. His want of political information was com- 
pensated by native sagacity ; and the great secret of his 
success consisted in keeping the common people, the 
majority, constantly by his side. 

Though not to be resisted by mortal successfully, 
Jackson had little blind avenues of approach, by which 
one artful, and at the same not unfaithful to his inter- 
ests, might turn him with surprising ease. Vanity was 
a weakness with him ; and the tale is at least plausible 
that one who could not get an office he wanted by the 
customary method won it and the general's heart be- 
sides by asking the gift of his old tobacco-pipe. Jack- 
son had a brusque humor and enjoyed lively company. 
He liked young men about him who talked to the point, 
knew how to give and take, would stand up without 
flinching to defend him, and trod on his foibles very 
gently. Such men learned to love the old hero, and 



23 2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

found promotion easy; for where Jackson's heart was 
enlisted he was very tender, and it was his maxim never 
to forget friend or enemy. He carried the master in 
his manner, but could make men feel it a pleasure to 
serve him. In the midst of his bitterest proscription 
of the Adams office-holders, or, as he called it, "putting 
down misrule," during the summer of 1829, his private 
letters to friends in Tennessee show that he was a sick, 
unhappy old man, weary with the buzz of beggars and 
sycophants about him, and longing to retire and be at 
rest. 



Angrily as the friends of internal improvement pro- 
tested against the President's repeated control of ma- 
jorities by his veto, the policy he pursued was on the 
whole a popular one, and well calculated to allay dis- 
content at the south. But South Carolina nullification 
was now coming in sight, and a celebrated debate which 
belongs to the first session exposed its claims and its 
fallacies to the country. When South Carolina put 
forward her "exposition and protest," she looked for 
rescue to Andrew Jackson. His accession to office 
checked for a time all excitement upon the tariff ques- 
tion, and he came in under circumstances which might 
well impose the prudence he practised; for the South 
had voted for him as the friend of southern interests, 
while New York, Pennsylvania, and the West looked 
upon him as a friend of the tariff. But Calhoun and 
the South Carolina leaders had not for a moment laid 
aside their scheme of resistance to the obnoxious act 
of 1828, — the "tariff of abominations," as it was called, 
— and they prepared to bring nullification forward at 
an early opportunity in a more imposing manner than 



SOUTHERN NULLIFIERS 233 

had ever before been attempted. They meant to test 
thus the strength of their cause before Congress and 
the new administration ; and so infatuated was Calhoun 
for the moment that he imagined it in his power to 
draw Jackson himself into the meshes of his finely- 
woven theory of State sovereignty, and induce the 
national lion to stretch out his paws submissively to 
be clipped. The arena selected for a first impression 
was the Senate, where the great chief himself presided 
and guided the onset with his eye. Hayne, South Car- 
olina's foremost Senator, was the chosen champion; 
and the cause of his State, both in its right and wrong 
side, could have found no abler exponent while Cal- 
houn's official station kept him from the floor. It has 
been said that Hayne was Calhoun's sword and buckler, 
and that he returned to the contest refreshed each morn- 
ing by nightly communions with the Vice-President, 
drawing auxiliary supplies from the well-stored arsenal 
of his powerful and subtle mind. Be this as it may, 
Hayne was a ready and copious orator, a highly-edu- 
cated lawyer, a man of varied accomplishments, shining 
as writer, speaker, and counsellor, equally qualified to 
draw up a bill or to advocate it, quick to discern, and, 
though brilliant, disposed to view things on the prac- 
tical side. His person was flexible, about the medium 
height and well proportioned ; his face pleasant and ex- 
pressive, and, though serious, lighting up readily with 
a smile; his manners irresistibly cordial and easy, win- 
ning strangers at first sight. He turned readily from 
business to society, and pursued with equal zest the 
triumphs of the forum and ball-room. A graceful 
adaptiveness at all points to a life of distinction was 
his striking quality; rugged inequalities in his nature 
there were none. Gifted for a life of public eminence, 



234 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

nobly born, bearing a Revolutionary name pathetic in 
its memories, well fortified by wealth and marriage con- 
nections, dignified, never vulgar nor unmindful of the 
feelings of those with whom he mingled, Hayne moved 
in an atmosphere where lofty and chivalrous honor was 
the ruling sentiment. But it was the honor of a caste ; 
and the struggling bread-winners of society, the great 
commonalty, he little studied or understood. This was 
the man to fire an aristocracy of fellow-citizens ready 
to arm when their interests were in danger, and upon 
him it devolved to advance the cause of South Carolina, 
break down the tariff, and fascinate the Union with the 
new rattlesnake theories. 

The great debate, which culminated in Hayne' s en- 
counter with Webster, came about in a somewhat casual 
way. Senator Foote of Connecticut submitted a prop- 
osition inquiring into the expediency of limiting the 
sales of public lands to those already in the market. 
This seemed like an eastern spasm of jealousy at the 
progress of the west. Benton was rising in renown as 
the advocate not only of western settlers, but of a new 
theory that the public lands should be given away in- 
stead of sold to them. He joined Hayne in using this 
opportunity to try to detach the West from the East, 
and restore the old co-operation of the West and the 
South against New England. The discussion took a 
wide range, going back to topics that had agitated the 
country before the constitution was formed. It was 
of a partisan and censorious character, and drew nearly 
all the chief Senators out. But the topic which became 
the leading feature of the whole debate and gave it an 
undying interest was that of nullification, in which 
Hayne and Webster came forth as the chief antagonists. 
Webster had seen the angry drift of the discussion, and 



HAYNE AND WEBSTER 235 

felt that it rested upon himself to uphold the cause of 
the Union, and his own State besides, from the men- 
aces and reproaches which the southerner hurled so 
recklessly. He believed that men were already plot- 
ting to break up the Union, and that the people must 
be aroused to vigilance. In politics, at the same time, 
his position was independent. His alliance with Adams 
had not been so close that the sense of defeat should 
make him either crestfallen or rancorous. Towards 
new parties his course was uncommitted; he tended 
to Clay, but he was no man's man, though a true 
son of New England, and to the fibre of his soul an 
American. Hayne launched his confident javelin at 
the New England States. He accused them 
of a desire to check the growth of the west Jan l8 J°lj 5 . 
in the interests of protection. Webster re- 
plied to his speech the next day, and left not a shred of 
the charge, baseless as it was. Inflamed and mortified 
at this repulse, Hayne soon returned to the assault, 
primed with a two-days' speech, which at great length 
vaunted the patriotism of South Carolina and bitterly 
attacked New England, dwelling particularly upon her 
conduct during the late war. It was a speech deliv- 
ered before a crowded auditory, and loud were the 
southern exultations that he was more than a match for 
Webster. Strange was it, however, that in heaping 
reproaches upon the Hartford Convention he did not 
mark how nearly its leaders had mapped out the same 
line of opposition to the national government that his 
State now proposed to take, both relying upon the 
arguments of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 
1798-99. 

Webster rose the next day in his seat to make his 
reply. He had allowed himself but a single night 



236 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

from eve to morn to prepare for a critical and crown- 
ing occasion. But his reply was gathered from the 

choicest arguments and the richest thoughts 
Jan. a6. that had long floated through his brain while 

this crisis was gathering; and bringing these 
materials together in lucid and compact shape, he 
calmly composed and delivered before another crowd- 
ed and breathless auditory a speech full of burning 
passages, which will live as long as the American 
Union, and the grandest effort of his life. Two lead- 
ing ideas predominated in this reply, and with respect to 
either Hayne was not only answered but put to silence. 
First, New England was vindicated. As a pious son 
of Federalism, Webster went the full length of the re- 
quired defence. Some of his historical deductions may 
be questioned; but far above all possible error on the 
part of her leaders stood colonial and Revolutionary 
New England, and the sturdy, intelligent, and thriving 
people whose loyalty to the Union had never failed, and 
whose home, should ill befall the nation, would yet 
prove liberty's last shelter. Next, the Union was held 
up to view in all its strength, symmetry, and integrity, 
reposing in the ark of the Constitution, no longer an 
experiment, as in the days when Hamilton and Jeffer- 
son contended for shaping its course, but ordained and 
established by and for the people, to secure the blessings 
of liberty to all posterity. It was not a Union to be 
torn up without bloodshed ; for nerves and arteries were 
interwoven with its roots and tendrils, sustaining the 
lives and interests of twelve millions of inhabitants. 
No hanging over the abyss of disunion, no weighing of 
the chances, no doubting as to what the constitution 
was worth, no placing of liberty before Union, but 
"liberty and union, now and forever, one and insep- 



LIBERTY AND UNION 237 

arable." This was the tenor of Webster's speech, and 
nobly did the country respond to it. There was no ap- 
prehension of an irrepressible conflict between slavery 
and freedom; but the liberty was that liberty which 
permitted of holding men in bondage, and the Union 
that product of the constitution which held in alliance 
the ambitions of States with their several slave and free 
systems of society. Thirty years later, when South 
Carolina forced the experiment now broached in debate, 
Webster's immortal sentiment, though he was then in 
the grave, first brought the loyal part of the people to 
their feet, and the South soon learned that peaceable 
secession was the wildest of delusions ; then the graver 
lesson was added that by once withdrawing his peculiar 
institutions from the protection of the constitution, 
their shield hitherto against the condemnation of man- 
kind, the slaveholder had exposed them to certain ruin. 
The new heresy of nullification was in this debate 
stated on the one side and refuted on the other. What 
Hayne and the incessant thinker from whom he drew 
his inspiration preferred for popularity's sake to call 
the States' right doctrine as declared, was that "in case 
of a plain, palpable violation of the constitution, a State 
may interpose" and arrest or nullify the law within her 
own borders for her own protection ; a statement of it- 
self too cautious to justify its practical application to 
any such case as that of the tariff, where, if any infrac- 
tion could be claimed at all, it consisted merely in raising 
duties, properly laid, to an excessive rate. Against such 
a doctrine Webster showed that this government was the 
independent offspring of the popular will, not the crea- 
ture of State legislatures, nor obliged to act through 
State agency; in other words, a national government, 
possessing within itself all the powers necessary to en- 



2 3 8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

force its own laws and for its own preservation; and 
that no State nor combination of States has the power 
to arrest or prevent the execution of a law of the United 
States. 



We are now at the portal of an epoch full of eager 
progress and the crowding, trampling ranks of hu- 
manity. It is an epoch in which science 
x8 3 i. and sentiment, glory and degradation, the 
desire of material substance and devotion 
to principle, are found strangely blended; until 
above the din of industry is heard the roar of the 
cannon, and the smoke curls upward from many a battle- 
field, where the stubborn Americans, invincible when 
united, have turned their arms and energy upon one 
another. Let us take of the age we are leaving, already 
becoming a primitive one by comparison, a brief retro- 
spect, like one who ascends a mountain road and looks 
back for the last time upon the green meadows and wavy 
slopes gently nestling in the perspective, before the 
high mountain crests and the ravines furrowed with 
deep lines appear, the picture of fierce but careworn 
nature. 



America and her institutions were no longer to be 
expounded by superficial travellers alone, but by politi- 
cal philosophers like DeTocqueville,Grund, and Harriet 
Martineau, who came to appreciate and not disparage. 
The very name "American," now bestowed upon the 
people of the United States by universal consent, iden- 
tified them with a continent ; for in the New World, at 
least, our rank was first, and our example fast pervad- 



THE UNION IN 1831 239 

ing. The whole tendency of the last fifteen years had 
been to establish the American Union more firmly as a 
nation. For, composite and complex as this govern- 
ment doubtless was, so that each State might regulate 
and administer independently the mass of those con- 
cerns which affect the individual in his home and busi- 
ness relations, an elevated love of country found its only 
grand expression in the growth and prosperity of the 
whole Union. This central government, limited and 
specific as might be its objects, had yet the greater 
energy and directness; the starry flag, the army and 
navy, ocean commerce, diplomatic intercourse, the 
power to make war or peace, to acquire and regulate 
new territory and increase from time to time the mem- 
bership of States, all were national. Born of the im- 
mortal strife, this Union had been firmly established 
by a second war for independence. The names of 
Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Hamilton, 
shone in the same glorious constellation. The magnif- 
icent domain of this nation, enlarged by peaceful pur- 
chase, the procreation of new States while old ones re- 
mained in territory contracted, the constant move and 
interchange of population, the increasing facilities of 
travel, traffic, and diffusion of ideas, all tended to draw 
American States closer in laws and manners, and to 
foster both the national sentiment and a sense of inter- 
dependence, which presented the Union as indispensable 
to the well-being of the whole country. Under such con- 
ditions State pride could hardly flourish beyond the 
borders of the old thirteen, nor there, unless citizens of 
colonial descent were haughty to new-comers and new 
ideas. 

It was an error not rarely committed by strangers to 
judge of the whole United States by one part. Massa- 



2 4 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

chusetts and Louisiana, Pennsylvania and South Caro- 
lina, were really as unlike in habits and character as 
England and Scotland, or so many different kingdoms 
of Germany. Hence Europeans were often misled by 
gossiping writers upon American life, like Mrs. Trol- 
lope, who saw but one phase of it, and stretched the 
truth to broaden a caricature. Every State, every sec- 
tion, bore marks of its peculiar origin, and there were 
palpable differences in manners, traits, and social insti- 
tutions, which to fairly explain and reconcile required 
one to trace carefully the threads of local chronology, 
if not to make a careful tour of the whole Union. 
Those differences we have already sketched ; and it only 
remains to add that in a people like ours, essentially 
modern, the influences which moulded each separate 
State were easily studied. For though Europe fur- 
nished the starting-point, yet the European countries 
whence we were derived had each its national character 
fully formed when American colonization began. Brit- 
ish emigration alone, that most powerful element of all, 
the foundation of British colonies on the various points 
of the Atlantic coast, was accompanied by conditions so 
strikingly different as to give to the Anglo-Americans 
and their offspring a strong family likeness, and at the 
same time an unlikeness. Especially, at the present stage 
of our development as a people, was it needful to distin- 
guish between Americans of slave and free States, and 
those again of communities old and new. Only in a 
free State might one labor for himself and win position 
by it; only in a new one did he escape conventional 
society and the usual exaction of deference to the local 
aristocracy. Lines of demarcation like these were 
graven deeply into the Anglo-American nature. 

Nothing was more firmly implanted by this time in 



AMERICAN CHARACTER 241 

the American nature than a fundamental faith in the 
sovereignty of the people, and a conviction that the will 
of the majority should rule. The principle was ap- 
plied in private co-operation, secular or religious, as 
well as the affairs of state ; and even they who happened 
to be in a present minority assented to the rule, knowing 
well its value to themselves should they hereafter pre- 
ponderate in numbers, as they hoped, and turn the 
scales. This majority doctrine was the vital function 
of our American system ; for it imposed self-discipline, 
pointed to persuasion as the true means of acquiring 
personal influence, and kept the general society con- 
stantly armed against the arrogance of its individual 
members. Americans no longer owned a preference 
for monarchies; they agreed in the support of popular 
government, and the only essential point in dispute re- 
lated to the extension of the suffrage and political 
rights to men formerly disqualified. Under such a 
system imagination would find less scope than the sense 
of civic responsibility; errors were committed, and 
abuses suffered through ignorance or a lax supervision 
of the people's servants, but correction followed dis- 
covery, with a temperate exercise of justice. In the 
ruling race of this Union the love of freedom and im- 
provement was admirably blended with respect for the 
laws and the disposition to deal moderately in affairs; 
and hence the vast superiority of this republican experi- 
ment as contrasted with that of the turbulent races of 
Spanish America. Politics interested all, and its pas- 
sions might sometimes provoke scenes of violence; but 
violence recoiled upon those who attempted it, and 
every open attempt of a minority to wrest a victory by 
force was frowned down. The danger under our peace- 
ful system consisted rather in the fraudulent effort of 



242 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

partisans to figure a majority by bribery, secret intimi- 
dation, a corrupt ballot, and the falsifying of returns; 
and what made that danger the greater when men un- 
dertook to live by politics, was the necessity all politi- 
cians were under, as a class, of paying court to the 
people in order to rise. Flatterers and time-servers 
might thus drive high-minded and sincere statesmen 
from their seats. These were evils to be watched and 
checked, if not wholly prevented ; and evils will abound 
sufficiently under every form of government. Birth 
and wealth excited envy; but every citizen of superior 
talent, having a genuine good to accomplish, was likely 
to find his true field of public usefulness, if he perse- 
vered. Hitherto, at least, in American history, the 
chief honors of the republic had fallen to the virtuous 
and intelligent, and patriotism felt the inspiration of 
great examples. 

If the pride of the American in his nation had at this 
period something of morbid solicitude that his visitors 
should feel as he did, we must not fail to respect the 
seriousness of purpose with which he was working out 
a noble experiment against the prejudices of civilized 
Europe. He wished his cause to be fairly stated 
abroad, and was angry when it was not. His earnest- 
ness made him espouse in feeling the cause of liberty 
throughout the world. Wherever humanity fought for 
its rights, wherever the yoke of tyranny was shaken off 
and men contended to be free, there might be found the 
American heart. The first breezes of the French revo- 
lution sent the blood leaping in our veins. We were the 
first of nations to extend to Bolivar and the Spanish 
Americans sympathy and welcome; the Greeks and 
their cause had our early God-speed; Kossuth, Gari- 
baldi, in turn, won later our enthusiasm. Indeed pop- 



AMERICAN MANNERS 243 

ular feeling in the American Union was often so fever- 
ish when thus stimulated, that those responsible for 
affairs kept with difficulty that path of neutrality which 
sound policy and tradition enjoined; often the popular 
excitement spent itself in meetings and contributions, 
and then it was discovered that impulse had carried 
us beyond the bounds of rational judgment. Cold cal- 
culation and interest could not sway the American feel- 
ing, but the prudent after-thought saved us from folly. 
It seemed often as if the American knew no empire less 
than the universal heart of mankind; for in whatever 
community public opinion and the will of the majority 
could hold a realm in steady obedience, there was the 
American fatherland. 



To unlock American manners at this age one must 
recall the varied circumstances of local settlement and 
the heterogeneous elements of which American society 
was compounded in consequence. Old Dutch customs, 
which Irving so well describes, had left their trace in 
Manhattan Island and along the shores of the Hudson ; 
wherever they might congregate, our foreign immi- 
grants, the Irish and Germans in particular, kept up 
some social observances of the old country; but what- 
ever was most striking and permanent in American 
manners was chiefly derived from England, the hive 
of these Atlantic colonies. If we were less provincial 
than formerly, it was because of habits engendered in 
our independent and strange surroundings. In most 
respects the federal government was subordinate to the 
State in moulding the institutions of local society ; but 
through all, save in the remote frontiers first colonized 
by the Spanish and French, worked the influence of the 



244 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

English common law, which is a law of custom or of 
ancient decrees crumbling into custom. Between 
Northern and Southern society ran the boldest line of 
demarcation; the West reproducing the habits of that 
section which dominated in its birth, but with a racier 
flavor. 

The leading feature of American society as a whole 
was its commonplaceness, the unpicturesque level it 
afforded. And to dwell chiefly upon the average social 
life in our free States, where the busy hum was loudest, 
few, very few Americans could afford to indulge in idle 
leisure. In older centres of fashion, like New York, Phil- 
adelphia, and Boston, and inmost small towns of colonial 
pedigree, might be found some ruling social set which 
nursed its little century of traditions, and skipped the 
grandfather to quarter their arms among the shadows 
of remote ancestors in other lands. The ambition of 
exclusiveness is Anglo-Saxon, if not universal ; but the 
laws and the circumstances of American life deny it a 
handsome scope. Here one ladder serves for rising, 
another for descending; laws of inheritance break up 
a fortune into fragments; the favor of the people is 
essential to public preferment. As for a leisure class 
like that in England, which the author of "Pelham" 
described, — men devoted to club life and frivolous 
pleasure, born to fortunes which they were restrained 
from consuming, yawning out of bed at noon, and 
spending the night at balls or gaming-houses, after an 
hour's lounge in Parliament, to which the pocket bor- 
ough furnished a seat, — no such class yet existed in 
America. What inducement had the foreigner of 
wealth or refined habits to migrate hither ? It was for 
the poor, the industrious, those without large means or 
influence at home, that this country presented its at- 



AMERICAN BUSINESS 245 



traction. Its charm lay in the wide diffusion of public 
and social opportunities, and the real phenomenon of 
this American life was that here, beyond every other 
age or country in the world's history, the mass of com- 
mon people were intelligent and free. All our fashion- 
able and aristocratic distinctions were but as lace dra- 
pery floating out of an open window. 

Of American methods in business, we have already 
spoken. And again must the reader listen to those 
sounds of ceaseless activity which in the United States 
filled each observing stranger with astonishment be- 
cause it was so earnest and so universal. No one in 
these free States felt as if he could afford to be idle. 
Even the best endowed and the best educated, with rare 
exceptions, pursued some occupation, and our learned 
professions were full of distinguished men who earned 
for their families the moderate income. Of all who 
possessed a fortune scarce one-quarter part had inher- 
ited it; the rest gained wealth by their own industry, 
and after acquiring habits of toil and economy which 
were seldom abandoned in later life. It cost as much 
care to keep a fortune as to make it, such were the risks 
in this ever-moving mass of society. Scarcely feeling 
that he had laid up enough to retire upon, the Amer- 
ican pursued his busy schemes to the last moment; yet 
for counteracting the miserly tendency in the individual 
there was always a surrounding atmosphere of social 
influences to brace him up and make him feel that as a 
public servant or public benefactor he owed the duty 
of a good citizen. This regard for public opinion made 
wealth in America a great lever ; rich men did penance 
for a stingy youth, not in their wills alone, but by liberal 
gifts to churches, colleges, and hospitals while they 
lived; and the community, by advertising their good 



246 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

deeds, indirectly added to their store. In a society like 
ours there was a certain policy in doing good with 
wealth which fortified the nobler impulses ; for religion 
and charity both depended upon voluntary support ; tax- 
ation, too, and the whole system of popular government 
rested upon the wealthier. Wealth emphatically was 
power ; and the newly rich even in the older cities trod 
close upon the heels of an aristocracy which boasted 
blood but no money, while in new and robust centres 
of life their social lead was irresistible. Scholars and 
professional men already felt the need of their patron- 
age, and, though popular honor might consist with hon- 
est poverty, private comfort and advantage sought to 
expand by riches and found a family name. Three 
rich Americans of this period, all public-spirited and 
identified with three great cities, were of humble extrac- 
tion : Girard of Philadelphia, Astor of New York, Law- 
rence of Boston, — the banker, the real-estate investor, 
the founder of the cotton-mills. 

Fourier writes of "industrial feudalism" as the mas- 
ter-spirit of the nineteenth century. These barons of 
industry, of the bank, the mill, or the carrier company, 
still less of the stock market, had scarcely yet founded 
their strong castles, though the force of organized cap- 
ital swept below the surface of business like some hid- 
den current. Monopolies as yet there were none, 
except perhaps in banking. Occupations were diversi- 
fied. That minute perfection in a single industry 
which competition had produced abroad was scarcely 
known here, but for all other work the American was 
well adapted. With canals to be dug, towns to be 
founded and built up, forests cleared away, factories 
started, mines disemboweled, there was abundance of 
work from the highest to the humblest, and the Irish 



AMERICAN INDUSTRY 247 

bog-trotter who could handle a spade or pickaxe might 
feel sure of an honest living. One industry fostered 
another. Consequently, our manners and customs were 
those of a society hard at work and intent almost to 
enthusiasm on subduing the material world. Here was 
to be seen a vast country, much of it still in nature's 
primeval wilderness, and a vigorous race hacking and 
hewing in all directions, preparing forest lands for 
farming, and farm-lands next for a close urban popula- 
tion. Every true citizen carried some speculation in 
his brain, — a back street which would open up house- 
lots in his potato-field, a railroad or canal which would 
bring his town half a day nearer than the next to mar- 
ket, some snug venture with his friends in a coal- 
mine, a cotton-mill, or a western township. His proj- 
ect was feasible usually if only the country would grow 
up to it fast enough. So in our patents utility was 
sought; of perpetual-motion machines little was left, 
but ingenuity was hard at work upon labor-saving im- 
plements for threshing, washing, churning, shelling 
corn, cutting straw, and the like. Whatever the Amer- 
ican took in hand he tried to make productive, to bring 
out two blades of grass where one had grown before. 
Nor did he hoard and save like the Dutch, but he in- 
vested. Usury laws still prevailed, but our new States 
allured capital by the allowance of liberal rates of in- 
terest, and wherever the law was harsh devices were 
common for evading it. 

"Such unity of purpose and sympathy of feeling," 
writes the pert Mrs. Trollope, "nowhere else exist, ex- 
cept, perhaps, in an ant's nest." 



But the phenomenon of American development was 



248 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

the growth of the great West. Solitude and privation 
founded this most typical civilization. Two or three 
hundred farmers, who dwelt far apart in little log 
cabins, with scarce a human companion outside the 
family nest, sowed the seed of happy towns and villages, 
many of which had sprung up and blossomed before the 
founder's eyes. These barons of the quarter-section, 
settling upon acres which cost often the last dollars one 
could scrape together, would put up each his mis- 
erable hut, and proceed to cut and clear and plant In- 
dian-corn, with no ready capital but a few blankets, a 
skillet, rifle, and axe, and the two-horse wagon which 
brought him many a day's journey with his family. A 
strong arm and a stout heart, a loving helpmate, and 
God over all, these were his dependence and his thought, 
as he waded through the long grass wet with evening 
dews, his gun on his shoulder, bringing home the game 
which served for food. Hundreds sank under the ex- 
posure, for fever and ague exhaled from those un- 
drained swamps, and no doctor was near to relieve the 
wife in childbirth or set the broken leg; but they who 
bore such privations grew tough and wiry in the out- 
of-door life. What wonder, then, that the Western 
patriarch who had once carried his grain twelve miles 
to be ground grew to be proud and even boastful when 
population pressed about him, and he had wealth, in- 
fluence, and the comforts of life for his last years? 
This pride and boastfulness still permeated Cincinnati, 
that first settlement in this modern world which in 
twenty-five years had grown from an acorn of the 
forest wild into a thriving city of more than 30,000 
inhabitants ; for though first settled in 1 789, it was not 
laid out with building-lots until 1808. This " wonder 
of the West," this "prophet's gourd of magic growth," 



THE GREAT WEST 249 

this "infant Hercules," whose slope ascended from the 
crowded river-front beyond the city to a beautiful am- 
phitheatre of encircling hills, had already the appear- 
ance of a large, industrious, and well-arranged city, in 
spite of the down-hill drainage, the hog-infested alleys, 
the streams running red with slaughter-house blood, 
as Mrs. Trollope described the realm of this hoyden 
queen. Geographical position and business relations 
with North and South made Cincinnati naturally con- 
servative in political sentiments; but the controlling 
spirit was Northern, and the anchorage in a free State. 
Here the propensity was for new faces, new recruits in 
the hive to tread the honeycomb; and in the cease- 
less welcome to the stranger less space was afforded for 
knitting the ties w T hich bound tried comrades to- 
gether. 

This Western boastfulness and push, and ready hos- 
pitality, which gave to our expanding Union a new type 
of character, was not much longer to effervesce chiefly in 
Cincinnati. Another star, and a brighter, beamed on 
the horizon at the far-distant lake and prairie of North- 
eastern Illinois. But Chicago realized as yet only the 
forecast of a great destiny. A wooden village, crowded 
to excess, and clustering close to the guns of Fort Dear- 
born, whose stars and stripes were emblems of the 
Great Father with whom the Pottawatomies had come 
to treat for their removal beyond the Mississippi; the 
town where these Indians danced the war-dance and 
ran howling through the streets, humored where once 
they terrified; such was Chicago as late as 1833. But 
there was already a great speculation on foot, and its 
white inhabitants were convinced that here was the 
germ of an immense city. Fairs were held, horses 
traded off, new steamboat-lines projected, — in fine, 



2 5 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Chicago was already a vast sutler shop for dispensing 
among those large settled tracts and townships to the 
south and west tea, coffee, sugar, and other supplies 
brought through the great lakes from Detroit. St. 
Louis, far beyond the Mississippi, completed the pres- 
ent group of Western cities ; anciently settled, French in 
origin, pro-slavery by adoption, having a speckled pop- 
ulation and elements adverse to a generous develop- 
ment. But a new St. Louis had already sprung up near 
the old one, and fine limestone warehouses fronted the 
river. In this emporium of trans-Mississippi settle- 
ments and world's end the Northern spirit predomi- 
nated, and for ten years its denizen had been ready to 
put his thumb on the map and brag that, as St. Louis 
stood at the centre of the American Union, it would 
some day be the capital of the nation. Illinois was in 
1 83 1 the swarming State for free settlers, though a 
thin line of pioneers had advanced up the Yellowstone 
and Missouri rivers, two thousand miles west of our 
Union frontiers as bounded when Jefferson was chosen 
President, and already the Rocky Mountains seemed 
scarcely more remote from civilization than the Alle- 
ghanies had been a century before. 



Calhoun's downfall from Presidential favor was 
pregnant with woe to the Union. Through the adroit 
expedient which displaced his friends, he saw the 
clenched hand which was silently raised to destroy him. 
These four years of alternate hope and de- 
spair were the delirium of his life; and the 
fever of ambition now coursing wildly in his veins left 
him, when the Presidential prize was borne beyond his 
reach, and his disappointment complete, a lonely and 



CALHOUN'S DOWNFALL 251 

mischievous man, bloodless as a spider. Here lies the 
key which unlocks Calhoun's later career, and reconciles 
the whole inconsistent record of his public life; once a 
national man of nationals, but henceforth all for his 
State, for the Southern cause, reckless of the Union 
and the national welfare. 

Singular was it that a statesman of Calhoun's capac- 
ity could have supposed for a moment that States-right 
theories more unpopular than those of the Hartford 
Convention could be planked into a Presidential plat- 
form; but he was a man of theories, who held young 
men by his glittering eye, and in the present chase, at 
least, he was easily infatuated. Ignorant as a child of 
northern sentiment and stability, and of spirit too lofty 
to win support by the little arts which were now coming 
into fashion, he seems nevertheless to have dreamed 
that he could in 1832 consolidate the South against the 
centralizing influences of the last eight years, bring 
over Pennsylvania and the West, and thus win the elec- 
tion. Under him a last rally would be made for pure 
government against a vulgar despotism. But northern 
men of cooler judgment who were lately his intimates 
foresaw his failure, and felt that his star had sunk for- 
ever. 



The tariff subject, into which local and sectional in- 
terests are pieced like the coat of many colors, 
seemed destined now to recur with each Pres- 
idential contest, always to agitate but never to be set- 
tled. In spite of all that has been confidently said or 
written on this subject during a century of the Amer- 
ican Union, it cannot be said that our people have 
advanced a single step beyond the experimental stage 






252 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

of national tariffs ; and this, most of all, for the reason 
that opinion is swayed by business interest, while busi- 
ness interests interlace over the vast surface of our con- 
tinent, not only changing, but coming into admitted 
rivalry. Men may not fathom the laws of trade, but 
they trade upon principles of which they are tenacious ; 
and to those principles, and the individual gain which 
they perceive in consequence, whether by making or 
saving money, they are likely to adhere. Actual ex- 
periment, it is true, may change a conviction on such 
points, but theory never. Here, among a varied and 
vigorous race of toilers crowding upon one another, 
eager to amass, and living under a complex but elastic 
system of laws which they themselves may influence, it 
is certain that the most intricate problems of political 
economy will in time be worked out ; not, however, upon 
the lines of European experience, nor without much 
waste and wandering. Agriculture, manufactures, and 
commerce are all of national concern, and each must be 
considered; none should be greedy to the detriment of 
the rest. 

Upon this delicate question the Jackson administra- 
tion hardly showed its hand. The tariff act of 1828, 
against which the Southern planters had inveighed so 
bitterly, was still unchanged. Neither manufacturing 
nor agricultural States regarded it as a finality ; and the 
increasing prosperity of American commerce, which 
bore with it an increased revenue, produced a state of 
things, now that the public debt was approaching ex- 
tinction, where tariff modification of some sort would 
be not only judicious but indispensable. 

As between these long-clashing principles, that of 
free trade may be pronounced the ideal one. It accords 
with nature; it respects the rights of man as a free 



- 



A NEW CAMPAIGN 253 

dweller upon God's earth ; it fulfils that primary condi- 
tion of trade that commodity shall be exchanged at 
choice for commodity, without hindrance or a subsidy 
to any man. But the world's trade is regulated, not 
by theory, but by existing facts; and there is no such 
thing as free trade with other nations unless other na- 
tions concede it. For the United States protection or 
favor to American industries meant at this time a final 
release from the bondage of the British colonial 
policy. 



National bank, internal improvements, reform in 
the civil service, a just and orderly administration — 
such was the platform of principles over 
which Clay's followers unfurled for the last 
time the banner of "National Republicans." All the 
fragments of that once formidable party had by 1831 
rallied under him as the only man who could possibly 
lead it again to victory. While these opposition ele- 
ments had little cohesion, Jackson ruled his own fol- 
lowers with a rod of iron. Many still called this party 
by the old familiar name of "the Jackson" or "the Jack- 
son Republican" party, but the word "Democratic," 
once affixed for reproach, and deprecated, this section 
of the old Jefferson Republican fold into which Monroe 
had absorbed all parties, fearlessly accepted in 1832. 
Jackson, then, and not Jefferson, was the first avowed 
leader of the American Democracy; and the national 
party that now gathered to conquer under Jackson by 
the noble name of Democrat, though ruled by southern 
ideas, has never been dissolved nor failed of a standard- 
bearer. Of this, his own party, Jackson was now by 
common consent the candidate for re-election as Pres- 



254 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ident ; and following the second-term movement, begun 
in his favor by Pennsylvania and New York in 1830, 
Illinois, Alabama, and most other States in turn nom- 
inated him, either by the legislature or in popular con- 
vention. The only need at all for a national gathering 
of his party at this time was to nominate a Vice-Pres- 
ident as the associate of his ticket. 

Long, then, before the adjournment of Congress, and 
while the fate of the Bank recharter and tariff remained 
in suspense, the two national parties had selected their 
nominees. The flag of the Jackson party or "Demo- 
crats" bore the names of Jackson and Van Buren; that 
of the "National Republicans" emblazoned Clay and 
Sergeant. The Democracy or Jackson Republicans 
(for many of this party still adhered to the name of 
"Republican," which Jefferson had made historical) 
gloried in the foreign and domestic policy of their chief, 
the near extinction of the debt, the correction of 
centralizing tendencies, and above all, in Jackson's 
personal popularity. The "National Republicans," 
comprising chiefly the Adams men of 1828, promised 
to turn back the rising flood of misrule, and administer 
affairs in a broad and generous spirit worthy a na- 
tion of such exalted destiny. But a third party now 
stood across the opposition path, to the dismay of Clay's 
lax following ; one, in fact, of those rare but recurring 
phenomena in our politics, which, like a comet spacing 
the sky, betokens some mighty convulsion, and then dis- 
appears to falsify and be forgotten. This was the 
Anti-Mason party, which by 1832 had gathered bold- 
ness enough to throw its whole force into the national 
encounter, there to perish ignobly. Its cradle was in 
western New York, and its first object of existence 



NULLIFICATION 255 

that of bringing the supposed assassins of William 
Morgan to justice. 



When Jackson's force-bill message was read in the 
Senate, Calhoun, now a Senator, earnestly repelled the 
imputation that South Carolina intended any- 
thing more by enrolling State troops than to 
defend her rights by legal process, unless the general 
government should employ troops against her. And 
by the time Wilkins, from the judiciary committee, re- 
ported a bill which clothed the Executive with the addi- 
tional powers asked for, the new Senator diverted 
immediate action from the subject by bringing forward 
a set of resolutions on the federal constitution. Here- 
upon he began dogmatizing upon the abstract right of 
nullification and secession, as though to put the whole 
revolution into chancery. Counter-resolutions were 
offered by Grundy and Clayton, by way of cross-bill, 
and the Senate plunged into a discussion as fruitless 
as it was bewildering, concerning the nature and ele- 
ments of the composite government we lived under. 
Out of this fog-bank of a priori reasoning emerged two 
chief theories and two chief disputants : the disputants 
Calhoun and Webster; the theories that on the one 
hand the constitution was a league or compact, and 
acted upon States, that on the other hand it was no 
league, no compact, but acted upon individuals. Cal- 
houn, whose native genius and desultory training made 
of him a political philosopher and empiric more than a 
practical lawyer, had grown to look upon our federal 
constitution more from the Roman than the English 
standpoint; and to the early Roman law, with its trib- 



256 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

une power, and that historical secession of the dissatis- 
fied, he now appealed to justify the resistance of a 
weaker section against the stronger. The illustration 
was not a happy one, for not only had Roman institu- 
tions no clear counterpart to our own, but Roman seces- 
sion and the creation of the tribune's veto were against 
patrician rule and in the interest of individual rights : 
that cause which creeps on over every republican 
system as resistlessly as the incoming wave of the 
ocean. 

Webster, on the other hand, foremost among legal 
practitioners, whose whole mould was English, rested 
more justly upon those maxims and manners of the 
common law which, most of all, inspired our political 
system. From Saxon loins could have sprung only a 
Saxon constitution; and Napoleon's cession of Louisi- 
ana, early in the nineteenth century, marks the first in- 
fusion of blood from Southern Europe into the veins of 
our body politic. But Webster, as a disciple of the old 
Federalist school whose demigod was Hamilton, took no 
pains to discriminate those composite elements of State 
and national influence which our ancestors had blended 
with such skill and nicety, but argued the case rather on 
the theory that the collective American people had or- 
dained that to which a separate confederate assent gave 
the sanction, and as though by the sorcery of that sanc- 
tion State sovereignty melted down to solidify into a 
nation. This conclusion he reached, moreover, by the 
unprofessional course of interpreting a written instru- 
ment by particular phrases, by a preamble instead of its 
general tenor. A statesman who believed in nullifica- 
tion as little as himself detected the flaw in the argu- 
ment. To Webster's plea that the Union was a gov- 
ernment of the people and not a compact of States, 



SOUTH CAROLINA IN 1833 257 

John Ouincy Adams noted his dissent : "it is both, and 
all constitutional government is a compact." 

In fact, the triumph or half-triumph of the principles 
of disloyalty and dissolution was more portentous of 
evil to this Union than tariffs, high or low. Better had 
it been, in view of later events, to meet the nullifiers 
then and there upon their own issue, and break the stub- 
born pride of South Carolina, than permit these her- 
esies to be sown broadcast. Never could the country 
have been more favorably situated in strength and re- 
sources for such a conflict. With all the sympathy 
natural among Southern planters, not one Southern 
State was likely to join South Carolina in the pre- 
tentious right to nullify and secede. The President, 
himself a Southerner, but at every fibre a Union man, 
might have been trusted in the emergency to uphold 
the majesty of the laws and the rights of the people. 
His very name as a soldier struck terror to enemies, 
and made the boldest conspirator falter. That South 
Carolina would have yielded without bloodshed is most 
likely ; that, madly contending, her coercion and abase- 
ment would have followed is certain. The sword of 
civil war is always terrible to draw; yet the worst 
slaughter in 1833 would have been light in comparison 
with that which followed the second provocation of this 
State less than thirty years later. But the forbearance 
of the stronger part of the Union equalled in these days 
the impatient disdain of the weaker; and temporizing 
remedies for relief, that mischief of all representative 
governments, drove the disease deeper into our system 
instead of eradicating it. 



As for Calhoun, distrusted henceforth as a conspir- 



258 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ator by a large fraction of his former party and by 
the general mass of the people, his capacious intellect 
and energy from henceforth belonged unreservedly to 
the pernicious cause of which he was now by far the 
ablest exponent, and to the spirited State which main- 
tained him steadily in public life. With scarcely a 
break in his new career, he sat in the Senate as one of its 
three greatest men, austere and isolated, devoted to 
Southern rights, and the unapproachable champion of 
doctrines which shook the Union to its centre. A kind 
master to his own slaves, he forged a chain, link by 
link, which should draw the whole country into the toils 
of slavery or break and leave slaveholders to form a 
new and stronger confederacy of their own. Into the 
mysteries of this metamorphosis he retired like a con- 
jurer who retreats into clock-work. Chaste as snow, 
and in his private morals stronger than Clay or Webster, 
he was not less corroded than they by ambition. While 
he sat in his chair in the Senate, rarely conversing, un- 
known personally by many of those who saw him daily, 
strangers studied his remarkable face and figure. Miss 
Martineau wrote of him as a cast-iron man, and others 
who saw him have used similar expressions; for he 
seemed to harden into a creature of intellectual solitude, 
who opened his mouth, whether in the Senate or at his 
fireside, only to impress others with his political mis- 
conceptions while imbibing not the slightest impression 
in return. His intellect, which was one of the greatest 
this country has produced, narrowed its range for the 
sake of effect. Embodying thus a few startling ab- 
stractions, he became, by the force of his striking and 
singular personal character and the habit of constant 
reiteration in speech and of probing profoundly as into 
a well, the sage, philosopher, and dogmatist of the slave- 



CALHOUN IN SENATE 259 

holding section, a most fascinating political teacher of 
the Southern youth, and withal a dangerous one. His 
reserved rights of States, as he worked out the theory, 
served for those who were in danger of being outnum- 
bered. Well-bred, unpretentious, and full of that sim- 
ple courtesy which captivates the young, and having, 
moreover, an unblemished integrity, and the nicest 
sense of personal honor in pecuniary affairs, the in- 
fluence Calhoun exerted in this later episode of his long 
career was immeasurably increased by the almost utter 
absence of public responsibility. Holding aloof from 
political parties as though he despised their modes, and 
keeping his State equally disdainful of the national pat- 
ronage, he was in a fit position to take always the re- 
form side of administrative questions and to denounce 
debauchery in the civil service. His bitterness for the 
rest of his life was to thirst for the chief office, while 
the tantalizing wave approached and receded constantly, 
but never touched his lips. 

In the present escape from the meshes of tariff resist- 
ance and premature rebellion, Calhoun suffered from 
Clay's friends some personal humiliations which ran- 
kled in his later allusions to the subject; but he schooled 
himself to think and speak with composure on all sub- 
jects, and never again to appear as an apologist. He 
had always been a man of cool self-confidence and au- 
dacity. His logical process and style of oratory were 
his own, and as unlike the eloquence of his great rivals 
as possible. He addressed his associates simply as 
"Senators," after the Roman fashion; his speech was 
direct, and rarely adorned with metaphor or anecdote, 
and, though trenchant, he rarely failed in courtesy. 
His long, coarse hair, which stood out straight from the 
skull for an inch and then fell over on either side of the 



260 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

head, grew more gray from year to year, the lines of 
his face more deeply marked, his luminous eyes more 
sunken, his thin lips more compressed, his cheeks more 
hollow, the lines of his face drawn out longer. The 
whole aspect of the great Carolinian betrayed the fires 
of disappointed ambition which he was resolutely 
quenching ; but the mischief he plotted against the free 
States, and the integrity of that broad Union from 
whose confidence he could expect no more, remained his 
heart's close secret. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

SECOND ADMINISTRATION OF ANDREW JACKSON. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-third Congress. March 4, 1833-March 3, 
1835. — § II. Period of Twenty-fourth Congress. March 4, 
1835-March 3, 1837. 

ANDREW JACKSON, when his second admin- 
istration began, was distant less than a fort- 
night from his sixty-sixth birthday. Of 
earlier Presidents chosen for two terms, both Wash- 
ington and Jefferson had retired from office 
when somewhat younger; Madison at an age M arlh 4 . 
equalling almost literally Jackson's present 
weight of years; Monroe when somewhat older, yet 
before he was sixty-seven. Jackson's health was already 
precarious ; there had been days when he was so feeble 
that it seemed impossible he could outlive his first term ; 
he fought infirmities constantly, and, a childless yet do- 
mestic man, he mourned tenderly the spouse whose 
fresh grave he had left behind him at the Hermitage 
to go where fame awaited him. 

What prompted, then, those plump majorities which 
bore this old man a second time into the civil chair, 
stronger in the popular support than before? Grati- 
tude, chiefly, for his heroic service in the field, and that 
idolatry which military heroes command under every 
system of government. Heartier, too, was the recogni- 
tion, because it had worked out slowly, and as though 
stifled by earlier misgiving. And what did the people 



262 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

expect from his second administration ? A policy con- 
servative on the whole, as before, which frowned upon 
monopolies and guarded the humble toiler. Our country 
was now prosperous, at peace with the world, free from 
the hard pressure of debt. Mere errors and foibles 
might be overlooked in a magistrate so popular; and 
supposing his grasp should relax, the smooth current 
would take us safely along. While that one dark cloud, 
nullification, mottled the landscape in the midst of the 
canvass, the people drew still closer to their veteran 
warrior by a common instinct, and their confidence was 
not misplaced. Clay might be called "the great pacif- 
icator," but that prouder title, "preserver of the Union," 
belonged to our military chieftain. 

Decked with this new honor, and triumphant, as it 
then seemed, over the hydra whose head was cut off, 
Jackson entered upon a second term, old as he was, 
when at the zenith of his national renown and popu- 
larity. The clouds once threatening had dispersed, and 
all was bright sunshine again. Had our hero laid 
down office at this moment instead of taking the oath 
anew, his fame must have been irresistible, for thus far 
his course had on the whole been wise as well as bril- 
liant; he had shown great sagacity, and, being uncor- 
rupt personally, all the odium of his patronage and 
mischievous appointments would have rested on the 
shoulders of his civil advisers and parasites; so un- 
willing are the people to believe any ill of their hero. 
Except for the spoils business and a few private quar- 
rels, he had well maintained the national dignity. 
Even now. as Andrew Jackson came quietly into the 
Representatives' hall on the 4th of March to take the 
customary oath for a second term, attended by Van 
Buren, the Vice-President-elect, and a private secretary, 



JACKSON'S ZENITH 263 

and announced to the assembled dignitaries only by the 
applause of spectators which greeted his entrance, his 
modest but distinguished mien prepossessed all hearts 
in his favor. Both Houses of Congress received him 
with every token of respect. Among foreign ministers 
resplendent in gold lace, and officers in their uniforms, 
he stood contrasted in plain black suit without a single 
decoration; an elderly man, tall, spare, and bony, and 
by no means robust in aspect. His dark-blue eyes 
peered out searchingly from beneath heavy eyebrows 
and a wrinkled forehead high but narrow ; his firm-set 
mouth and chin worked almost convulsively with the 
play of his emotions, and his general features conveyed 
the impression of a quick and nervous energy as well 
as great decision of character. His thick hair, bristling 
stiffly up in front, was by this time perfectly white, and 
being brushed upward and back from the brow, gave to 
his long and beardless face a delicate look, almost wom- 
anly in repose, which could not be forgotten. He 
dressed in the plain civilian suit of the period, with 
watch-seal dangling from the fob, a shirt slightly ruf- 
fled, and starched collar-points standing sentinel over 
the chin, which rose resolute from the constraint of a 
stiff black stock. 

In these later years Jackson often wore a pair of 
solemn spectacles which gave to his visage a more sage 
and penetrating look than ever; and when walking he 
would mount a light beaver hat, on which was bound 
his widower's weed, and carry a goodly cane adorned 
with a silk tassel, which he would flourish when animat- 
ed like a sword to emphasize his thoughts. That game- 
cock look, as some well styled it, which was Jackson's 
characteristic expression, was softened by the lines of 
advancing age. No stranger encountered his hospitality 



264 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

without mingling some tenderness with his admiration 
of the man. By dependents, by the young, by all fa- 
miliars whose purpose coincided with his own instead 
of crossing it, Jackson was idolized. To men of cooler 
judgment he recalled the knight of La Mancha, though 
only so far as they thought to caricature the fiery zeal 
with which one may charge at a debatable wrong which 
stands in his path rather than go round; for Jackson, 
if a knight-errant at all in disputation, dealt at least 
with the realities of life and that in a method most 
effectual. His chivalry, too, towards the fair sex was 
chaste and worthy of a knight-errant of old. He im- 
pressed as one intense in his convictions rather than 
broad ; passionate and irascible, liable to error and prej- 
udice, vindictive even, but most courteous to meet on 
his own ground, and in the main true to himself, or 
rather to his personality for the time being, for a 
character so impetuous is apt to shift its logic with its 
environs. Andrew Jackson was neither so ignorant 
nor so ill-bred as rumor and the rancor of his enemies 
would have made out. He had a frank and manly 
bearing, as one who felt himself a distinguished per- 
sonage in any society, and strangers from abroad who 
met him for the first time, prejudiced by all they had 
heard, were impressed by the courtesy of his bearing 
as well as his keen sagacity. On all public occasions 
his demeanor was admirable, showing the perfect dem- 
ocrat and man of the people, at ease with the world. 
He shook hands with all, conversed pleasantly, and ap- 
peared neither distant nor undignified. He spoke his 
mind on all subjects without affectation, and though 
the texture of expression might be rude, there was a 
body of thought beneath. 

A conscious pride now swelled the President's breast, 



JACKSON'S TOUR 265 

that of holding the rank of the first citizen in America, 
the twice-trusted leader of the people, the vindicator, 
besides, of the federal Union and national supremacy. 
This consciousness deepened his purpose to administer 
affairs rightly; but unhappily for the country, as the 
sequel will show, success and adulation turned his head, 
made him more arbitrary and unmanageable than be- 
fore, less disposed to heed the promptings of public 
opinion, or even of his own party followers. It is his 
second term upon which historical censure most safely 
fastens. He himself had looked upon his re-election 
canvass as a submission of his whole executive policy; 
but that verdict once given in his favor, he treated it as 
an approval at all points of whatever he had done or 
might do, and launched out boldly on his new career 
as autocrat of the democracy or tribune of the people, 
defying the co-ordinate departments of government as 
no other President has safely dared. 



Familiarity and the bitterness of faction lowered the 
tone of Jackson's public tour of 1833 as compared with 
former ones of the kind. The progress of Washing- 
ton, Monroe, and Lafayette had elicited a venerating 
applause which cemented the pride and loyal feeling 
of American citizenship, and society all along the route 
put forward its natural leaders to extend the greeting 
which all were zealous to express. But here the note 
of hospitality was pitched, as it were, from the 
kitchen and back-alley, and arrangements fell largely 
into the hands of petty dignitaries, many of them rabid 
partisans, about whom swarmed the mosquito breed of 
spoil-seekers r.nd buzzing insignificants, each striving 
to cut a figure on this occasion with politic ends in view. 



266 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

A thundering aggregate was the best part of the demon- 
stration. Statesmen of the opposite party retreated 
into the background. Distinguished scholars and cit- 
izens came forward, it is true, in some places, to swell 
the meed of applause, but it was chiefly to show respect 
for the office, if not the officer. The honorary degree 
he received from the chief and oldest seat of learning 
in the land was generally looked upon by scholars as a 
piece of ridiculous flattery to a man who was neither a 
scholar nor the patron of scholars. The blue bloods of 
Boston peeped from behind the curtains as his carriage 
went by under military escort. Various mischances 
occurred on his travels which enemies turned to ridi- 
cule. While the President was on his pious pilgrimage 
down the Potomac, a lieutenant of the navy whose 
name had been struck from the rolls came on board the 
steamboat at Alexandria and assaulted him, escaping 
the general's uplifted cane after slapping his face. At 
the New York Battery a crowded bridge broke down 
just as the President's horse had passed over it, pre- 
cipitating a dense mass of sycophants and spectators 
into the soft mud left by a receding tide, with just 
enough damage to make the scene laughable to those 
who read of it. Other mishaps were related at the ex- 
pense of members of his suite who were less bold than 
he in the saddle. Incidents like these gave a gro- 
tesque side to the tour,together with the mill-wheel roar 
of the populace, the hand-shakings, the Boston dys- 
entery, the ceremonious reception at Cambridge, where 
an imaginary Latin response electrified the President's 
classical audience, which rounded off in those stirring 
and patriotic phrases, "E pluribus unum; sine qua 
non!" For there was felt a delicious absurdity in cast- 
ing these academic pearls before the illiterate great, and 



JACKSON'S TOUR 267 

trying to keep up the academic conceit in doing so. In 
fact, the jocose reporter was now abroad for the first 
time, and there cropped out in the course of Jackson's 
tour a Colonel Jack Downing, whose letters pictured 
him travelling in the President's suite as intimate ad- 
viser and occasional proxy for pump-handle intercourse 
with the people. Jack Downing was the first of our 
newspaper humorists to sport with ephemeral events, 
the forerunner of Doesticks, Artemus Ward, Nasby, 
and other spurious personages of a school now familiar 
enough, whose mission is to lampoon the great. But 
neither the virulence of our better remnant nor the buf- 
foonery of the conservative press could cool the honest 
enthusiasm of the common people. Jackson appeared 
now in the full blaze of a warrior's glory. He had 
conquered nullification, or at least had conquered it so 
far as the national spirit of fraternity in those days per- 
mitted; for we came, we saw, we compromised. A 
little incident connected with his entry into Boston 
touched the chord which was deepest in the man and 
his admirers. At the city line the orator who greeted 
him at the triumphal arch gave this brief but hearty 
doggerel of his own composition : 

"And may his powerful arm long remain nerved 
Who said, The Union, it must be preserved !' " 

"Sir," was the laconic reply of the President, in a 
voice equally fervent, "it shall be preserved as long as 
there is a nerve in this arm !" 



Commerce grew impatient; the new and invaluable 
trade of the interior increased its demands with its de- 



268 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

velopment. Old people and slow have recalled with a 
sigh those peaceful days when a family party might 
charter the entire cabin of an Erie canal boat, and glide 
at leisure on the safest voyage of its length ever pro- 
jected by civilized man, eating and sleeping on board, 
and varying the monotony by striding the tow-path in 
advance of the horses, and sitting at the next lock to see 
the boat come up and take its new level. The dust and 
jolting of the stage were avoided, though the journey 
should consume more time. But the anxious business 
man who made one of twenty-five passengers whose 
majority, excluded from the red-curtained sanctuary 
of the fair sex, were compelled to eat, dress, and sleep 
in an outer saloon, gave a less pleasing picture of life by 
such conveyance. One wearied of being drawn inces- 
santly through tame meadow scenery by horses whose 
jog-trot at the end of a long rope was sobriety itself; of 
delays at the locks ; of low bridges which passengers on 
the deck had to shun by lying flat at the steersman's 
call; of the berths which were swung at night in tiers 
like hanging book-shelves, for which passengers drew 
lots. Had canal boats continued much longer in fash- 
ion they would have been propelled by steam. 



Hail to the glorious era which is now ushered in, of 
iron track and steam-locomotive, miraculous factors in 
accomplishing the social and inland changes 
of the nineteenth century. The world's rail- 
way system was inaugurated in 1830, when, in Great 
Britain, after stubborn obstacle and delay, the Liverpool 
and Manchester road, commenced in 1826, was for- 
mally opened for traffic in freight and passengers, pro- 
vided with George Stephenson's improved locomotives, 



THE RAILWAY ERA 269 

which were found capable of travelling at the speed, 
astounding for those days, of thirty miles an hour. 
The success of this enterprise was immediate and com- 
plete, and impelled capital to create similar lines, not in 
Great Britain alone but in every civilized nation on the 
globe's surface. As happens with most great appli- 
ances to the wants of mankind, some elements of the 
invention far antedated its full adaptation to general 
purposes, and the man of bold and successful experi- 
ment trod on the bones of unhonored prophets and luck- 
less projectors. 

Our modern railway involves two consummate prac- 
tical gains in transportation by land, — a gain by dimin- 
ishing friction, and a gain by applying a new motive 
power. For the latter and more astonishing invention 
the world owes its gratitude to George Stephenson, the 
English engineer, whose rise in life from an humble 
firemen in the colleries endears his example to the pop- 
ular heart of all countries and times. He was a self- 
taught man of science, and to perfect his locomotive 
applied his patient energy some twenty years. Yet 
Stephenson had the stimulus of Fulton's steamboat; 
nor must Trevethick's rude contrivance of 1804 be for- 
gotten which drew ten tons of bar iron at five miles an 
hour, nor Watt's still earlier patent of 1784, nor earliest 
of all, our own Evans, whose predictions of the triumph 
of steam locomotion had sunk deeply into the American 
mind. As for the gain by diminishing friction literally 
imported by the word "railway," that invention in the 
mother country dates back at least to 1672, when coal 
in Northumberland and Durham was hauled by a horse 
from the mine to the river upon a wooden tramway 
furnished with flanges to keep the wheels from slip- 
ping. 



270 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Our modern railway, then, was a most precious prod- 
uct of mineral industry ; and in the gloom and grime of 
a coal-pit a British mechanic was working out the next 
material wonder of the age, while Wellington fought 
the last great battle of the world where this means of 
locomotion could be ignored. Nor to trace out the 
experimental steps by which, in the course of a century 
or more, cast-iron and steel rails come to take the place 
of wooden beams, a wagon-train the single large 
wagon, while the flanges to prevent slipping are put 
upon the wheels instead of the track ; we find already in 
the tracked road alone, aside from steam motive power, 
a rival of the canal sufficiently formidable. 



John Quincy Adams's speech on this occasion* had 
been a trumpet call. As a speaker, he had not the grace 
of a melodious voice or an engaging manner. There 
was something rasping and jarring in his delivery; and 
when the old man undertook to make himself 
heard, as he sometimes did, above the din and 
confusion he helped most to create, his voice, though 
apt to break, would pierce the remotest corner of this 
ill-constructed chamber like the high notes of a fife. If 
his manner in speaking was harsh and unsympathetic, 
his matter when in debate was still more so. He in- 
dulged in the bitterest personalities, sarcasm, and cut- 
ting invective, exposed motives and imputed usually the 
most unfavorable, as his memoirs show, and in his 
whole course of action appeared very lightly bound to 
the current opinion of his time. He conciliated neither 
parties nor party idols. But in his courageous inde- 

*March 2, 1835, when our French relations were strained. 



ADAMS IN THE HOUSE 271 

pendence and fixedness of purpose lay the secret of his 
latest influence, which widened rapidly now that the ri- 
valry of personal ambition was eliminated; for there 
was a sort of stubborn integrity about him, a passionate 
patriotism. His keen insight, too, and profound con- 
ception of coming dangers, made his guidance more 
powerful with his fellow-citizens than they were aware. 
Athletic in his studies, he dived into the depths of the 
subject which interested himself and the public and 
brought up facts and motives. With family traditions 
and an experience in public affairs reaching back to the 
sources of our government, with systematic habits of 
which the younger statesman might despair who was 
unwilling to give up the pleasures of social intercourse, 
Adams in his old age knew more of his country's his- 
tory than any other American living. Reading and 
experience made him full, journalizing made him exact. 
Adams's personal appearance was as we have elsewhere 
described it, save for the encroachment of old age, 
which furrowed the face and silvered the scanty hair; 
his countenance was sober and morose almost to sor- 
row; his dress, unstudied and not seldom careless, be- 
trayed a frugal and unsocial disposition; his coldness 
and self-absorption repelled from personal contact 
many who admired him at a distance. While most 
other public men of the day made an art of attracting 
acquaintance, he kept up, more, perhaps, than he was 
conscious of it, those invisible barriers of family and 
classic pride which make common men feel their in- 
feriority. Such a man could not inspire affection co- 
equally with respect. It was the force of his splendid 
example, as a Cato among degenerate men, that drew 
the younger, from shame or admiration, to the side of 
this solitary sire; combatant as he was, in debate so 



272 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

bitter, of such egotism in his independence that the 
House listened to him with alternate good-will and 
anger. But this fighting man of infirm temper could 
always command an audience. His clock-like con- 
stancy made all insensibly lean on him. First, or nearly 
first, on the roll-call for some fifteen years, his unflinch- 
ing vote instructed the doubtful. Sitting attentively 
in that familiar seat on the left of the Speaker which all 
strangers entering the chamber first gazed at, the illus- 
trious ex-President grew more and more to be the 
monumental figure in this changing body. His seat 
he never changed, nor was he absent from his post of 
duty during the long season of his healthful old age. 

"It would scarcely surprise me more," was the felici- 
tous phrase of Everett, who now sat by him for the last 
time, "to miss one of the marble columns of the hall 
from its pedestal than to see his chair empty when the 
House was in session." Impetuous in his leadership 
when under excitement, Adams studied his own defects 
and tried to be temperate as well as bold. 

The greatest of ambitious minds will not apprehend 
readily the sphere of influence which Providence has 
assigned it. This triumph on the floor with which 
Adams's more striking career now opens brought him 
a pique which he took to heart. His present aspira- 
tion was to enter the Senate, but the struggle of can- 
didates being close in the Massachusetts legislature, a 
report of his speech, which was somewhat colored, 
turned the scales against him, and John Davis, the gov- 
ernor, a careful man to train with a party, was chosen 
as Webster's safer colleague. Had Adams transferred 
his seat to the other wing, his fame would have been 
eclipsed ; but remaining, as before, a sage among com- 
moners less illustrious than the Senate, closer to the 



WHIG PARTY FORMED 273 

people, more turbulent, and more impressionable, his 
figure stands vividly out on imperishable canvas. 



The political elements of the country, too long hin- 
dered in course by their triple division, now turned 
slowly into the channel-bed of two distinct national 
parties. Jackson was the personage that di- 
vided them. Against the rock of his popu- 
larity these opposition streams had dashed in vain. It 
was now time to unite and flow onward ; and his high- 
handed transfer of the public deposits and Executive 
war upon the Bank, a policy which divided Jackso- 
nians themselves, gave the pregnant opportunity. 
Events still earlier had tended to this confluence, — the 
national election in 1832, which tolled the knell of the 
Republican and Anti-Mason parties, and the troubles 
in South Carolina, which had not been pacified without 
making the President offensive to the State-rights dog- 
matizers of Virginia and the cotton States. Too often 
had Republicans and Anti-Masons been opposed ever to 
unite under one or the other standard, nor could Clay's 
grand old party survive longer the memory of its re- 
peated defeats and schemes of policy abandoned. But 
now, with the tariff taken out of politics by the com- 
promise of 1833, internal improvements a corpse, the 
present National Bank under sentence of death, and no 
sharp issue left to distract them, well might the foes 
of this administration shuffle off the coil of old princi- 
ples and raise together a new party ; protesting, embar- 
rassing all they could the men in power, but postponing 
their own financial and other plans until these could be 
concerted at better leisure. 

Names are things in politics; the title of a party is 



274 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

its talisman to conjure with, while the real or pretended 
lineage which it boasts of kindles the popular imagina- 
tion. This "Republican" party, offspring of the great 
Jefferson, who had given that moderate name as the one 
to conquer by, now dissolves, and another comes forth 
in the same plane of vision, there to shine for some 
twenty years and then melt into the phantom of the for- 
mer party once more as the latter grows out from the 
camera. Shall not that process of change be repeated 
while lasts the republic? The new national party was 
the "Whig" party. The attempt to unite the whole op- 
position to Jacksonism under the name of Whigs began 
in the spring of 1834, when important State elections 
followed the first panic caused by the removal of the 
deposits and the President's firm refusal to restore 
them. The name itself came first into use at that time 
in Connecticut and the city of New York, and kindled 
a blaze throughout the Union, being suddenly and spon- 
taneously adopted. By "Whig" was expressed the an- 
tagonism felt to the high prerogative or Tory doctrines 
of Jackson, — "King Andrew," as his enemies now 
called him, — who seemed to have usurped all the func- 
tions of state like an absolute monarch. The name 
pleased the Federal families of New England, never par- 
tial to Jeffersonian traditions, and Webster himself had, 
in 1804, appealed in a Federal pamphlet "to old Whigs." 
It pleased the State-rights men at the South, for Hayne 
had used the word favorably in his debate with Web- 
ster, and so had Jefferson in one of the last letters he 
ever wrote. These Whigs of 1834 announced them- 
selves the true successors of the Whigs of 1776, and 
likened their course to that of the rebel colonists. Their 
liberty poles defied the hickory pole. They chose for 
appropriate emblems the national flag, live eagles, por- 



WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS 275 

traits of Washington. In such a party Clay and the 
war men of 18 12 were joined on equal terms by the sons 
of Revolutionary sires. "I have been educated from 
my cradle," now proclaimed Webster, with zealous 
pride, "in the principles of the Whigs of '76." 

Against this new party, or, perhaps we should say, 
this foetus of a party, were arrayed at this time the Jack- 
son Democracy, led by the federal office-holders, who 
used the full strength of their position ; all under strict 
martial discipline. Whatever the chief ordered must 
be obeyed. These gloried, as well they might, in the no- 
ble name of Democrat, and stood the stronger by sinking 
deeper their base. Their hurrah was for Jackson, the 
hero of New Orleans, the foe of nullification, the cham- 
pion of the people against monster monopolies and the 
money-power. They claimed as theirs the votes of the 
common people and the friendship, too, of State banks. 
But a new name and a new subdivision had begun to 
cleave the ranks of this great party in the Middle States. 
About New York City arose a combination opposed to 
all bank charters, all monopolies ; this was the 
"Equal Rights party," a new growth from 
the seeds of a workingmens league which sprang up 
five years earlier there and in Philadelphia and then 
died out. A newspaper in jest dubbed these reform 
Democrats "loco-focos," * and the name adhered to the 
"Equal Rights" faction from that time forward, and, 
more than this, it soon extended to the whole Demo- 
cratic party of the Union, or to the Jackson- Van Buren 
wing at least which dominated it, and did not disappear 
for ten years. The leaven, too, of these "equal rights" 
doctrines worked in politics long after the faction which 

*See the incident of the meeting in a hall and loco-foco matches, 
IV., 194. 



276 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

first formulated them had been sold out by the dema- 
gogues who got control of it. Thus fantastical may be 
the circumstances by which a new political sect gains 
its name and its lodgment in the popular mind and be- 
comes historical. 

The great body of our American democracy has 
always been better in its creed than its practice. Strong 
naturally through that fundamental faith in human 
nature and in man's capacity for unrestrained living 
which gives it such immense scope in a growing re- 
public, it slips back unconsciously into the mire whence 
the poverty-stricken millions emerge and falls too easy 
a prey to vice and ignorance. This is most true of 
manufacturing towns and the great promiscuous and 
populous centres where these toilers become the victims 
of the slums and grog-shops which must thrive by them. 
The drill and drum-beat of office-holders, first perfected 
in the Empire State, Jackson made a national regula- 
tion, and used the wide patronage of government to 
draw round him a praetorian band. Nothing gave our 
national politics so downward a course as this, for 
office-holding lost the starch of self-respect when men 
held by the tenure not of merit but political favor. The 
proscriptive example set by one party the other followed 
henceforth. Both parties might boast of great leaders, 
but the opposition had the more intelligent rank and 
file; so that, as one of our scholars has well expressed 
it, the Democrats had the better principles, but the 
Whigs the better men. Southern planters seem to 
have preferred the alliance of leaders at the North who, 
like the Gaelic chiefs, could bring their clans with them ; 
they worked through the machinery of numbers; in- 
stinct and tradition, too, bred in them the Jeffersonian 
distaste for public pomp and public enterprise, and for 



WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS 277 

wealth founded in commerce and the arts ; and yet the 
Whigs, by their devotion to the Union, gained a good 
footing in that section. The Southerner, on his own 
soil, was not unlike the Tory squire, having a feudal 
partiality for lands and vassals ; but he was ambitious 
of national patronage, and this inclined him to persons 
wherever they could be found. 

In general, the Democrats sided with persons. But 
the Whigs, on the other hand, leaned to property, 
to great public and private undertakings involving 
money and fostered by privilege and favoritism, and 
to the men engaged in them. Their party, like 
the earlier Federalist, soon became the favorite of 
northern polite circles, of scholars, professional men, 
the rich and prosperous, tradesmen, bankers, of such 
as led good society or hung to its skirts; of 
capitalists and those who bask in the sunshine of 
capital, but most of all of manufacturers and mer- 
chants; classes intelligent, yet timid lest they should 
lose something, and disposed to personal schemes. 
Thrifty farmers might join this standard, but rarely 
did the mechanics and laboring men, the jealous poor, 
unless seduced or intimidated. Unlike the old Fed- 
eralist, however, the Whig, with his long training and 
antecedents, was in sufficient sympathy with popular 
institutions, only that he preponderated more to pater- 
nal and spectacular rule, while Democrats favored self- 
rule, even at the risk of misrule. The best practical 
wisdom of the day in trade and finance was at the 
service of this new party, the most eloquent expound- 
ers, too, of such topics ; but on the other hand, with such 
a rank and file, there was constant danger that politics 
would be measured by the yardstick of expediency, and 
principle postponed for the sake of heaping up the im- 



278 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

mediate pile. Launched into the sea of politics, this 
new ship, staunch and respectable, ploughed the waves 
under full sail, a conservative in motion. 



Let us pardon something to the spirit of American 
liberty, which was now taking a new and freer flight. 
America certainly was at this time prosperous and ad- 
vancing towards a richer range of life. In nations, 
like individuals, there comes that stage of development 
when the young blood leaps wildly and the sense of 
animal vigor tempts the healthy body to use and even 
abuse its functions. The swathing bands of discipline 
were being removed from the limbs of our common 
people; and why not romp and range and ravage, in- 
dulging the lusty appetite until experience has taught 
that salutary lesson of self-constraint which is the last 
corrective? Yet the discipline of society must be faulty, 
indeed, which leaves all to self-discipline. Among the 
political follies of this day the sage might perceive an 
increasing tendency to popular legislation, such as the 
abolition of the death penalty, the treatment of crime as 
a sort of disease to arouse one's pity, the relaxation of 
all punishment, all restraint. But is natural impulse 
the true barometer of character ? Do not the wild ex- 
cesses of youth sow the seeds of premature death or a 
corrupt old age ? This administration had been taking 
off the bandages; non-interference was the essence of 
the democratic dogma ; America, obeying the law of its 
passion, was heading to violent collision and corrup- 
tion. Many of us, to be sure, despaired too easily ; and 
Europeans held up this picture of American life as a 
warning to their own countries. But the spectacle of 
executive encroachment which this administration fur- 



PUBLIC DISORDERS 279 

nished, of arraying class against class, of bull baiting, 
as it were, the rich and respectable for the sport of the 
populace, of lifting the President into a sort of mon- 
arch of the multitude, as though Congress and the judi- 
ciary did not represent the people likewise, of dispensing 
offices like a despot ; all this had its pernicious effect in 
producing scenes of disorder, happily but temporary. 
Government for this term was one of personal example, 
honest but barbaric; for Jackson's policy, so nearly ex- 
cellent in its main pursuit, had become imbued with a 
spirit of lawlessness, or at least it gave that impression, 
and the impression produced the injury. 



A new abolition movement at the North did not, like 
the Quaker one of former days, respect constitutional 
bounds nor seek mild persuasion of the white 
master who held the local law in his hands. 
It boldly proclaimed that the laws of nature were para- 
mount to a human institution; it preached freedom as 
of divine right and in defiance, if need be, of the en- 
slaver. But in law-respecting communities like ours 
all such agitation bruised itself like a bird against the 
solid wall of the federal constitution, which, wisely or 
unwisely, surrounded the institution and sanctioned its 
existence within certain State confines. Antipathy to 
weaker men and races, and a dogged attachment to 
property as something with which none others are to 
interfere, save as their own property may be injured 
by it, are two strong traits of the Anglo-Saxon. He 
has a conscience, domestic virtue, and a restraining 
common sense to be influenced ; but of woman herself 
Shakespeare's Petruchio talked like an Englishman 
rather than an Italian of his day, when he said, "I will 



280 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

be master of what is mine own." And such was our 
slaveholder's response to the abolitionist when menaced 
where he stood. Pride and blind interest banded the 
southern masters in bristling defiance; patriots of all 
sections felt the constraint of the written law, and then 
abolitionism slid into an angry tirade against the con- 
stitution as a covenant with death and agreement with 
hell, and its creed became "no union with slavehold- 
ers," — in a word, disunion, because instant and legal- 
ized abolition was impossible. We shall see in the 
angry years that follow southern secessionists and 
northern abolitionists standing upon essentially the 
same platform, though at opposite ends, both demand- 
ing that the American Union be broken up. 

The boldest exponent of this new anti-slavery school, 
the pioneer and arch-agitator of immediate abolition, 
of conscience above the constitution, was William Lloyd 

Garrison. He it was who opened this new 
jln.'i. y ear as tne editor and publisher, in Boston, 

of a little sheet known as the Liberator; stern- 
ly resolving that this paper should go forth to the world 
so long as he could subsist upon bread and water, or 
find employment with his hands. A practical printer 
as well as editor, he set up his own type in his obscure 
den of an office with precarious aid, spelling out by his 
metal letters thoughts which he had not committed to 
paper, making up his bed at night on the floor, and sub- 
sisting from day to day on modest rations procured 
from the humble bakery and fruit-shop. One or two 
liberal friends supplied money and subscriptions. 
Forced rapidly into notice by a free circulation south- 
ward, the Liberator, in its very first year, was so well 
known and feared that the Georgia legislature offered 
$5,000 for the arrest of any one found circulating it; 



THE ABOLITIONISTS 281 

while the conservative press of the Union denounced 
the editor as a fanatic, one who was madly doing all 
the injury possible to the cause he affected to support. 
Garrison had deliberately chosen at the start the radical 
ground he ever after maintained, retracting an assent 
he had formerly given to the threadbare theory of grad- 
ual and persuasive abolition. With merciless severity, 
he arraigned the frozen apathy of the North and the 
prostitution of the South on the slavery question; he 
could not tolerate scruples on behalf of the written law ; 
all doughfaces, apologists, and timeservers he wrote 
down as traitors and cowards, and unhesitatingly he 
declared slavery to be a crime and the slaveholder him- 
self a criminal. "I am in earnest," were his words, 
confessing his own severity; "I will not equivocate; I 
will not excuse ; I will not retreat a single inch ; and I 
will be heard." 

A quiet and inoffensive man of aspect, bald-headed, 
wearing spectacles through which his eyes darted a 
keen but kindly glance, a strict abstainer from liquors 
and tobacco; and so gentle withal to look upon that 
Harriet Martineau declared him the handsomest man 
she had seen in America, in spite of an excessive self- 
humiliation which might be ascribed to the conscious- 
ness that he was intensely hated by good society, Garri- 
son was impelled on his course by the harsh experience 
he suffered in a border slave State, which left behind a 
rankling sense of injury. And thus, on the free soil 
of Boston, the Liberator was born. How strangely do 
one's opinions change with the current of his feelings. 
Scarcely two years earlier, when a Vermont editor, and 
a promoter of negro colonization, he had written an 
ode for Independence day brimming with the Union 
sentiment, and his appeal to "a people whose hearts are 



282 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

but one" jangled strangely with those bitter invectives 
of his new press, which declared the American consti- 
tution to be "the most bloody and heaven-daring com- 
pact ever contrived," and "in the nature of things, and 
according to the law of God, null and void from the be- 
ginning." 



Marshall, the chief-justice, had now passed away 

— a man whose intellect and clear sense of justice 

needed no swathe of citations to pierce a 

jSy e. legal principle to the bottom. Head of the 
national judiciary for nearly thirty-five years, 
while Presidents came and went, and swaying a bench 
whose membership seldom changed, by his quiet 
energy and force of character, his simple manners 
and imperturbable temper, he stole into the hearts of 
the American people by slow degrees while building 
about them an impregnable wall of precedents. The 
supremacy of the nation was his design, and silent con- 
tinuity the source of his power. Stronger than any 
maker of the laws is he who can long construe them. 
Marshall had made the Supreme Court a bulwark 
against the encroaching tide of Jeffersonian Democ- 
racy ; and through him Federalism impressed the image 
of the republic with its last and softest touches. His 
death left a bench of able associates, all of whom had 
seen political service, but none save Story ranked 
among famous jurists. Story's promotion to chief- jus- 
tice was impossible under the present administration. 
A new career now awaited the court, and the hero of 
blood and iron impelled it forward; having fought the 
national judiciary, he now remodelled it. Three out 
of the five associates, McLean, Baldwin, and Wayne, 



TANEY CHIEF JUSTICE 283 

had already been seated under his commission; Philip 
P. Barbour, of Virginia, he added as the 
sixth, in place of Duval, who had resigned. 
But Jackson's triumph came when a chief -justice had 
to be named; and Taney, rejected so lately by the Sen- 
ate as Secretary of the Treasury, because he had re- 
moved the deposits, and again thrown out by adver- 
saries for associate justice, now reached the very pin- 
nacle of his wishes ; for scarcely had this Congress met 
when the President named him as Marshall's successor, 
and his confirmation followed. 



Large space has been given in our narrative to An- 
drew Jackson's administration because of its strong 
idiosyncrasies and the character of the national events it 
served to develop. He has left a landmark in our annals 
for all time. Much is said of the influence of ideas in 
producing history, but the really controlling influence 
of this epoch was that of personal example. And never 
did popular parties opposed to one another respond to 
personal guidance so heartily as those which now grew 
up under the leadership of those fierce combatants, al- 
ways at variance with each other, Clay and Jackson; 
the one combining popular elements too intelligent and 
opinionated not to show signs of jealous dissension, 
the other having a blind democracy for a nucleus so 
dense, so devoted, and withal so carefully disciplined, 
that rivalry was kept low and political mutiny punish- 
able as though by martial law. Strong in all his traits 
of character, his vices as well as his virtues, Jackson's 
public example was one for positive good and positive 
evil, — -a mixture of brass and clay. There could be 
nothing negative about him. What he purposed, that 



284 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

he put his hand to and bore it safely through. His 
mind moved rapidly, and with an almost lightning-like 
perception he had resolved the point while others were 
deliberating; and right or wrong, he was tenacious of 
his conclusion, and fought to have his way like one who 
felt it shame not to win. There was no twilight of 
dubiety about him ; he knew, and knew earnestly ; and 
within the steel horizon which bounded his vision he 
could pierce to the circumference in all directions. As 
his intellect admitted of no half-truth, so did his nature 
revolt at bargains and compromises, such as Clay, his 
mortal enemy, was an adept in arranging; but with 
him it was to conquer or die on every occasion, win a 
clean victory or endure a clean defeat. This temper, 
as those who knew him best have admitted, gave him a 
load to carry all his life ; every step he took was a con- 
test; and yet, if ever mortal may be said to have tri- 
umphed in what he undertook, every contest was a vic- 
tory. Jackson could not live without a quarrel; and, 
though capable of strong and lasting attachment, 
friends and enemies often changed places as his ambi- 
tion developed, and no one could remain long in his 
confidence who did not humor his foibles and bend to 
his purpose. Conscientious difference of opinion he 
knew not how to tolerate, and friendship that was not 
all in all was not at all. Gratitude implied a self-abase- 
ment, and he felt it for no one; even coequal compan- 
ionship was something of a yoke to him; it was ad- 
miring devotion that won his heart, and the better angel 
of his nature was compassion. But though knightly 
towards women, tender to children, the young, the 
gentle, the fallen, to all who nestled up confidingly, his 
contempt for weakness disposed him to snatch what- 
ever he wanted, regardless of others' rights. He could 



JACKSON'S CHARACTER 285 

bully a sister republic to get her territory, and drive 
the half-tamed Indian from his homestead and the white 
man's neighborhood at the point of the bayonet, and all 
this with hardly the pretence of compunction. Frank 
and sincere in the main, and wishing to be thought so 
whatever ill might be imputed to him, of manners cor- 
dial and graceful, he was a generous host at home, and 
after his own ideal a southern gentleman. Yet for all 
this he had something of the borderer's fierce disposi- 
tion ; with the men among whom he had been born and 
bred might made right, and honor was vindicated by a 
brace of pistols at ten paces. Such a citizen could never 
have been exalted to national distinction in the courtlier 
age of the republic, and his fame waited long for civil 
recognition, even after his military success. Spring- 
ing up out-of-doors and in the free sunshine, rough con- 
tact with mankind in a pioneer society gave him an 
education; and as a slaveholder, long used to an easy 
independence and to being waited upon, he acquired 
that self-confidence in later life without which con- 
sciousness of merit must fail of renown. As chief 
magistrate he was an innovation upon American life, 
a novelty, — in some sense a protest against the past. 
He was the first great product of the West, humanly 
speaking, Clay only excepted, whose genius partook 
more of Eastern example. He was the first President 
of this Union chosen from the west of the Alleghanies 
and a pioneer State ; the first ever borne into the chair 
with a general hurrah and no real sense of civil supe- 
riority for the office. He was the first President from 
what we call the masses ; the first whose following vul- 
garized, so to speak, the national administration and 
social life at the capital. Old age and debility had 
much to do with the venerating applause which con- 



286 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

stantly followed him, and forced even his whims to be 
respected; the people seemed anxious to make amends 
for so long neglecting to advance him. 

Jackson ruled by his indomitable force of will, his 
tenacity of purpose, courage and energy. He did not 
investigate nor lean upon advice, but made up his mind 
by whatever strange and crooked channels came his in- 
formation, and then took the responsibility. Experi- 
ence made him rapid rather than rash, though he was 
always impulsive; and he would despatch the business 
which engaged his thoughts, and that most thoroughly. 
Though stretched on the bed of sickness, he held the 
thread of his purpose, where none could take it from 
him ; his will rallied and beat under the body. He de- 
cided affairs quickly, and upon impulse more than re- 
flection; but his intuitions were keen, often profound, 
in politics as well as war. His vigor as an Executive 
at his time of life was truly wonderful. He left noth- 
ing in affairs for others to finish, betrayed no sign of 
fear or timidity, shrank from no burden however mo- 
mentous, but marched to the muzzle of his purpose, 
and, like an old soldier, gained half the advantage in a 
fight by his bold despatch and vigor. The night march 
and surprise were points he had learned in Indian war- 
fare; and were it war or politics, he carried out what 
he had fixed upon with constant intrepidity. This in- 
trepidity went with a conscious sense of duty; for, 
though a Cromwell in spirit, Jackson's ambition was 
honestly to serve his country. Loyalty to the Union, 
sympathy with the American common people, were the 
chief impulses of his being, for all he loved power ; and 
hence a majority was almost sure to sustain him. 
Courage and directness the people admire in any man, 
and a sordid or usurping nature they are apt to dis- 



JACKSON'S CHARACTER 287 

cover. Jackson had the Midas touch, which could 
transmute whatever he handled, if not into solid gold, 
at least into a substance of popularity. And yet no 
servant of the ballot-box felt less the need of courting 
popularity, or of waiting for public opinion to bear his 
plans forward. Lesser statesmen might be exponents, 
but he led on, leaving the public to comment as it 
might. 

We have intimated more than once in our narrative 
that Jackson was neither so frank nor so chivalrous as 
he passed for, nor yet so little of a politician. Was 
there ever a great general who did not employ strategy ? 
Jackson could dissimulate, and in his very maladies he 
gained some crafty advantage. One of his warmest 
admirers has pronounced him a consummate actor, 
whose art often imposed the policy of rashness. Van 
Buren found him a man guarded and self-controlled 
where he had seemed impetuous. He could put off an 
inconvenient friendship so as to make his friend appear 
the wrong-doer. Of darker duplicity signs, though in- 
conclusive, are not wanting. But his blunt perceptions 
of right and wrong, his brutal obstinacy, and the tail- 
wagging subservience which he exacted from those 
about him did the country he meant to honor an irrep- 
arable mischief. While President his irascibility 
forced those who would influence him to take to tortu- 
ous methods. Cabinet officers, men far better versed 
in affairs than himself, had to fall in with his opinions, 
and seem to yield; overreaching, if they might, when 
executing his orders, or bringing the subject up again. 
This, and his preference for the kitchen advisers, had 
something to do with his frequent cabinet changes. All 
had to pay court to get on. Van Buren earned most 
from his intimacy, playing the faithful hound, and it 



288 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

cost him dearly in the end. The circle surrounding the 
old man fed him with gross flattery. All this gave 
soon the smirch to decent self-respect. Personalism 
came to tincture all politics, all policies, all politicians, 
under his arbitrary and exacting administration; and 
the painted Jezebel of party patronage seized upon the 
public trusts for her favorites. Such a state of things 
was sure to breed corruption sooner or later. Praeto- 
rian bands showed the first symptom of Rome's decay. 
Bands of office-holders, united by the necessity of keep- 
ing the spoils and salaries from other bands equally 
ravenous, may prove an early symptom of our own, if 
the people submit to it. Personally honest and un- 
stained by bribery, Jackson played nevertheless into the 
hands of others who traded upon his violence; greedy 
followers milked the offices they had gained by partisan 
service. Even the battery of the National Bank, in 
which he led off, had its pugilistic aspect ; money put up 
against money, and monopoly fighting monopoly. 

Jackson's illiteracy is admitted by his admirers; but 
opponents of his day made too much of it, as though 
administration were a matter of mere scholarship. 
Longer experience in popular self-government has dis- 
pelled that illusion. It was of greater note that his 
strong personal feelings mingled in all he said or did, 
and that opponents were colored by his temperament. 
In conversation he interested, whether he convinced or 
not, being clear, earnest and straight to the point both 
in thought and expression; and while no question ad- 
mitted of two sides to his mind, his own was fearlessly 
grasped. As his speech was sagacious and incisive, 
in spite of slips in grammar or mispronunciation, so he 
could write with powerful effect, though no scholar in 
the true sense, and in personal controversy he was one 



JACKSON'S CHARACTER 289 

to be feared. His state papers engaged able minds in 
and out of his cabinet, yet the direction of thought, the 
statement of policy, the temper of the document, were 
his own. Others might elaborate the argument for him 
or polish and arrange the composition, but, after all, his 
was the central thought; and he would flourish over 
the paper with a rapid pen, and a huge one, until sheet 
after sheet lay before him glistening with ink and glow- 
ing with expression as though it were written in his 
heart's blood. That there were misspelt words to be 
corrected, or awkward sentences to be trussed up after- 
wards by his secretary, is not to be denied. In short, 
Andrew Jackson fed little upon books and much upon 
experience with unconventional life and human na- 
ture ; but he had what is essential to eminence in either 
case, a vigorous intellect and a strong will. In the 
conduct of affairs he took advice wherever he saw fit, 
and like a commander secretive of his own plans, 
tested the views of his council and then made up his 
own mind. 

Such was the remarkable man whose shaping influ- 
ence in national affairs made him the transcendent 
figure of these times; in him of all Americans the 
Union, for thirty years prior to the eventful i860, was 
personified. In faults and merits alike he was so great, 
and he produced so much that was good and so much 
that was vicious, that the historian may well be per- 
plexed to trace the blending line. This warrior first 
entered office with an easier task before him than any 
of his predecessors, and twice when he took the official 
oath he might have shaped his course peacefully to the 
popular predisposition, which was to reward a veteran 
soldier with the highest mark of honor. Twice, how- 
ever, as we have seen, did he surprise expectation, both 



2 9 o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

by the vitality of his rule and his peculiar aptitude for 
fighting out some new political policy. He fought 
well, as he had always done, and was as pertinacious 
in returning to the attack and mortifying the foes who 
had wounded his friends. Quarrels and bad blood 
made the large component of these eight years' policy ; 
the fight of factions made the spoils of office, for the 
first time, a national principle ; the fight with the Bank, 
originating, most likely, in personal offence, was a per- 
sonal one to the close ; and but for his personal rupture 
with Calhoun one may well doubt whether nullification 
would ever have raised its reptile head. Jackson's best 
act was to trample down that heresy, though the snake 
was only scotched, and his worst was to debauch the 
public service. In the one, as in the other, his example 
long outlived him. But most pernicious of all, in quick 
results, he initiated the treacherous policy of Mexican 
dismemberment and annexation for the sake of slavery ; 
from a motive pseudo-patriotic, however, to preserve 
the equilibrium of the Union, and with a responsibility 
quite indirect for the worst that followed after he had 
set the ball in motion. As for the rest, his foreign 
policy was brilliant and sagacious; his stand on the 
tariff and internal improvements judicious for the 
times ; his course to the Indians, though harsh, not with- 
out justifying reasons. He paid off the national debt, 
like the punctilious planter he was, who abhorred all 
debt, public and private, and with real opportunity 
might have left to his country some plan for disposing 
of a national surplus instead of leaving himself on rec- 
ord as a censurer of all plans. Upon his financial 
policy our narrative has dwelt already, and the full 
effect of that glorious folly, the transfer of the deposits, 
will soon be shown. With all his fervent zeal, there 



JACKSON AND JEFFERSON 291 

_______ , . 

were limitations to his theory of public banking, limi- 
tations to his theory of a fraternal Union. 



No President ever ruled these United States in times 
of peace with a personal supremacy so absolute as the 
two great chieftains of our Democracy, Jackson and 
Jefferson, though in methods and character they were 
so little alike. The one was a born manager of men, 
the other a stern dictator ; the one philanthropic to the 
socially oppressed ; the other a hater rather of the social 
oppressor ; each, however, influenced by a love of coun- 
try which was a ruling passion, by constitutional re- 
straints somewhat independently interpreted, and, in 
later life at least, by an unconscious bias to the side of 
the South whenever slavery was threatened with vio- 
lence by northern agitators. This last in Jefferson 
weakened his practical efforts in the anti-slavery cause, 
though he was anti-slavery in sentiment to the end ; in 
Jackson, who thought himself no worse for being a 
master, if a kind one, it stimulated the determination 
to make his section strong enough to hold out against 
the abolitionists, for abolitionists and nullifiers were all 
hell-hounds of disunion. Jefferson had gently manip- 
ulated Congress ; Jackson ruled in defiance of it, and by 
arraying the people, or rather a party majority on his 
side, against it, until the tone of his messages, if not 
really insolent, was that of conscious infallibility. Con- 
gress is elastic, however, and easily rallies, being nat- 
urally the encroaching power under our co-ordinate sys- 
tem. But as for the people, the danger grew that their 
will in elections would be fettered by machinery and 
machine managers. In these years the Democracy 
made rapid strides, and the nation, too, advanced in 



292 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

power. Self-confidence increased, and a domineering 
disposition. There was a vigorous vulgarity about 
this administration at every point, resolution, and a 
passionate love of danger. And yet at home, factions 
and mob violence were always on the increase; and 
though the principles of national institutions and of 
fundamental authority were discussed as never before 
nor since, there never was a time short of civil war 
when lawlessness gained so nearly the upper hand in 
the community. The most dangerous infractions of 
the constitution are those not violent enough to provoke 
the governed to open resistance, and of such there were 
many. Jackson's school of philosophy was not tolerant 
and reconciling. There were too many friends to re- 
ward, too many foes to punish. Class was inflamed 
against class, the poor showed their teeth at the rich; 
and while the Union was constantly held up for rev- 
erence, and even idolatry, the joints were strained, the 
fraternal bonds parted, and men of both sections began 
to feel themselves less unionists at heart than before. 
And thus, though decked out with glory, did Jackson's 
iron rule plough long furrows in the back of the repub- 
lic whose scars are still visible. 



CHAPTER XV. 

ADMINISTRATION OF MARTIN VAN BUREN. 

§1. Period of Twenty-fifth Congress. March 4, 1837-March 3, 
1839. — § II. Period of Twenty-sixth Congress. March 4, 
1839-March 3, 1841. 

FINANCIAL crash and widespread disaster 
closely succeeded Jackson's retirement from 
office; and Van Buren, his cherished successor 
in office, had to provide some means for replenishing 
an empty public treasury. The new doctrine was to 
place the general government in all its deal- 
ings on a specie basis and make it the custo- 
dian in its own vaults of its own funds. This doctrine 
of the government its own depository, which the new 
President's message for the first time unfolded, was 
elaborated in a report which accompanied it from the 
Secretary of the Treasury. 

Such was the plan of the "independent treasury," as 
its friends called it, or, as more commonly styled, of 
the "sub-treasury." It was simple, natural, and easy 
to comprehend ; taking, in fact, the exact diagonal from 
the forces which so lately were opposed. But this was 
an innovation, and all innovations have prejudice to 
surmount, and that most formidable of all forces, the 
force of habit. Trade had climbed and clustered for so 
many years about the tower of a National Bank that its 
now prostrate vines felt the want of that same solid 
masonry to sustain them. Then, again, the State bank 



294 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

interest, still powerful, hoped to regain its favors. 
Other objections occurred at once. Would not an in- 
dependent treasury increase instead of diminishing the 
dangerous power of the Executive? And granting 
that the system might work well while the Union spent 
its whole income, paying out as fast as it reecived, these 
were still surplus years of revenue with the crisis once 
surmounted ; and with ten millions at least, and perhaps 
twice and thrice or even four times that amount, of the 
precious metals locked up idle in the public safes a busi- 
ness convulsion was certain ; for in finance to hoard is to 
throw into disorder. In the present universal depres- 
sion this looked, too, like a direct attack on the whole 
banking and credit system of the country, like an effort 
by an administration whose sincerity was not greatly 
confided in to subvert all banks and all bank circulation. 
The solid objection to the new proposal lay, however, in 
its incompleteness; a medicine was offered, but not a 
panacea. It met the immediate question of affording a 
safe place for the public deposits and might develop an 
exchange system practicable enough for the wants of 
the government ; but the broader question of a safe and 
uniform national currency it left untouched, uncured. 
From this point of view, indeed, the Van Buren plan 
looked like a selfish abandonment of the people's ship 
in distress. Instead of helping the craft to weather 
the gale the government "took the long boat." 

The independent treasury idea was the lasting fruit 
of this administration, and to Van Buren belongs the 
credit of producing it. It was sound and excellent so 
far as it went, and, though the plan helped sink the 
originator, it indicated his courage and capacity. A 
persistent opposer of banking privileges, the thought 
germinated early in his mind; and while he consulted 



GOVERNOR SEWARD 295 

others he was dominant in giving form and shape to 
the measure. No one aided in embodying the idea in 
legislation so much as his friend Silas Wright, the in- 
fluential senator from Van Buren's own State, and the 
purest man of the whole Albany regency. 



The alliance of Seward, Weed, and Greeley was a 
powerful one in the Empire State in Whig times to 
contend with the Albany regency, its natural 
antagonist. Their talents well blended to 1839-40. 
counteract their several faults. 

Young Seward was by nature humane and progres- 
sive, a born statesman of the sanguine and speculative 
school founded by Jefferson. His training and ante- 
cedents, indeed, were Jeffersonian; but anti-Masonry 
brought him into contact with John Quincy Adams at 
an impressionable age, and Adams's personal example 
became the guiding star of his existence. Seward soon 
came to detest slavery, though bearing himself like a 
philosopher; his nature was genial and attractive, and 
his art always remarkable in avoiding personal collision 
under whatever provocation, and yet wherever placed 
he did not fail to show at least the mettle of his con- 
viction. He disliked pomp and ceremony, and it 
amused him in these early years to see how common 
men would pass him by and single out some man in the 
room of portly figure and imposing presence, like 
Granger or Fillmore, as their ideal of a chief magis- 
trate. A generous and free liver, as his means enabled 
him to be, he was accustomed to spend all his official 
salary in maintaining his station, so that none could say 
that he made money in public employ. But while above 
all suspicion of greed or corruption, a foible was his dis- 



296 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

regard of public economies ; for, like a true disciple of 
Adams, he inclined strongly to grand schemes of in- 
ternal improvement which the State was to prop up, 
and his innate tendencies were to paternal and even 
prodigal government. This desire to enrich and ben- 
efit, however, was founded in his philosophy, and so 
was his optimism, which presented always the bright 
side of things. He had great faith and forecast, but with 
somewhat of that prophetic conceit which among fal- 
lible mortals leads in some momentous crisis to a false 
prediction. Most of his predictions startled by their 
truth, a few proved false ; but the line between prophecy 
and policy was not always to be discerned in his con- 
duct of affairs, for his worst fears were expressed in 
private confidence, while he seemed always to lead on 
the people from hope to hope. In this is true states- 
manship, and Seward never forgot in the sage a states- 
man's limitations to the best attainable rather than the 
greatest abstract good. 

Seward's friend, Thurlow Weed, was of a coarser 
fibre, but resolute, devoted to his friends, full of energy, 
persistent, shrewd, and not over-scrupulous, a man of 
the machine, and robust in his partisanship as he 
was in physique. Such men are indigenous to Amer- 
ican politics, where the next power to the throne is the 
power behind it, and every great statesman needs his 
political manager to keep him in relation with his con- 
stituents. The political manager of these days was 
the journalist, whose reward came in the growth of his 
subscription-list and such rich jobs as that of the public 
printing. It was Weed who discovered Horace Gree- 
ley, a poor young printer and unthrifty editor, in the 
great city, and induced him to publish in Albany a 
Whig paper for the State campaign of 1838 styled the 



WEED AND GREELEY 297 

Jeffersonian. The admirable quality of Greeley's pen- 
work had attracted the notice of the shrewd party man- 
ager. Greeley's paper did well its part towards the 
election of Seward, and then Greeley returned to his 
crust and his attic. A young flaxen-haired youth, 
stooping, near-sighted, ill-dressed, and ill at ease in pol- 
ished company, Greeley was a born journalist, of the 
kind to impress the public by his sincere and fervent 
convictions. Though hungering for some one of those 
snug salaried places which Seward now dispensed, but 
which he was too proud to ask for, he reaped the re- 
wards of his new alliance in the field overlooked by 
many an aspirant — that which he was most fit for. 
Being a man of crotchets and philanthropic blunders, 
Greeley, open and susceptible as the day, embraced each 
new "ism" which promised to regenerate mankind. He 
was no practical administrator, and hence, superior as 
he was to Weed in mental calibre and loftiness of pur- 
pose, he could no more have filled Weed's place in pol- 
itics than Weed could have filled his own. 



Van Buren's personal character and administration 
may be summed up briefly. He was the first of Amer- 
ican Presidents during nearly half a century whose 
lineage was Dutch instead of British; the first, more- 
over, who was not born a British subject, but on free 
American soil. But what was of more immediate con- 
sequence, Van Buren was the typical New Yorker of 
public life and the first President of this Union from 
that great middle section where politics have responded 
most to practical management. 

When in high station Van Buren tried to dispel the 
impression that he was a man of intrigue ; but the more 



298 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

he tried, the more of an intriguer he was thought to be. 
Though subtle rather than strong, he certainly had tal- 
ents far beyond the average of public men, not as a 
political organizer only, but in the higher range of 
statesmanship. He was a good diplomatist, a fair ad- 
ministrator ; his democracy, albeit a little servile to the 
many, was wholesome and robust. He steered between 
North and South on irritating subjects better than he 
received credit for doing. As President, Van Buren 
was still detestable, in the use of the public patronage 
and showed corrupt tendencies ; but he should be cred- 
ited with moral courage and sagacity in the leading 
measure by which his administration is distinguished. 
The sub-treasury plan, the final divorce of public and 
private finances, was his own; he brought his party to 
that policy and shared a national defeat rather than sur- 
render it. This is enough to stamp him as a states- 
man. Then, again, he resisted schemes for annexing 
Texas in the interest of slavery. 

Van Buren in personal appearance was below the 
middle height and inclined to corpulence. The fa- 
miliar names "Matty" and "Little Van" were not ill 
bestowed upon him, whether in ridicule or admiration. 
His blue eye was quick and searching; his hair, turned 
to gray, stood crisply out on both sides of his broad 
forehead ; and, with his bald head and handsome coun- 
tenance, he had a decidedly English look, as of one pros- 
perous, benevolent, shrewd, an alert looker upon the 
busy world about him, satisfied with himself, but withal 
somewhat cynical of men and their motives. Had he 
been given more to field sports and fox-hunting, one 
might think of him as an American Lord Palmerston, 
such was his air of bright and breezy good humor and 



VAN BUREN'S CHARACTER 299 

his princely affectation. He valued the philosophic 
temper of Franklin and Madison, and made much com- 
modity of his little thoughtful civilities. To Madison 
he has sometimes been likened for calmness, discretion, 
gentle manners, and the remarkable facility of avoiding 
personal quarrels. That parallel might be drawn out 
further ; for Madison and Van Buren each succeeded a 
remarkable political leader, whose personal friendship 
advanced him; each had held the portfolio of State; 
each suffered, too, by the inevitable contrast with a 
predecessor who was taller in every sense; each was 
overtaken by a blinding storm which was stirred before 
his coming; and while neither retired from the Presi- 
dential office with the fame he had hoped for, both lived 
long enough to take a calm retrospect, and see in trou- 
blesome times that the people were better instead of 
worse for the policy each had pursued. But here the 
parallel must end. Madison was as far above the sus- 
picion of hypocrisy or servility as Van Buren was 
made opprobrious by it. His mild and unobtrusive 
consideration for others was of a very different flavor 
from Van Buren' s imperturbable vivacity which 
showed the desire to half conceal, or his cautious ex- 
pression of views, feeling the way with subtle reserva- 
tions. Van Buren was bolder, as well as more selfish, 
in the conduct of affairs. Madison, indeed, was rather 
a timid Executive, having been little trained to take re- 
sponsibility ; but for patriotic purpose he was more 
trustworthy and more trusted ; and, in fact, having been 
re-elected to office, he carried the country through the 
crisis for which men had reproached his party, and re- 
tired victorious. But for Van Buren, victory, even 
such as his policy was capable of winning, had to be 



3 oo EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

postponed; for, to begin with, the people mistrusted 
his sincerity and feared that his sub-treasury was the 
blind for some deeper scheme. The name of dema- 
gogue long adhered to him, though time brought a bet- 
ter appreciation of his genuine merit. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ADMINISTRATION OF WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. 

Period of Twenty-Seventh Congress. March 4, 1841-April 4, 
1841. 

HERE, as the web began to weave, the wheel was 
broken. The great Whig victory of 1840 lost 
its force. Harrison, never robust of body, 
had been borne into the vale of years by temperance 
and the routine of mild activity. He had not the de- 
fiant mettle, the indomitable energy, the pride 
of will, of that other old soldier, to whose 
spoils policy he fell the first victim. The incessant 
strain of public care, consequent upon a campaign of 
unparalleled excitement and the fatigues of his trium- 
phant journey, agitated and wore him down faster than 
they could conceive who drained his vitality so freely. 
Generous and hospitable, he indulged his friends to his 
own destruction. His wife had not yet joined him, 
and the White House life was homeless. Busy from 
sunrise until nearly midnight with company and affairs, 
except for an hour each day which he passed with his 
cabinet, he had neither privacy nor leisure. His first 
purchase as chief ruler was a Bible and prayer-book; 
and after his daily devotions he would take a morning 
walk, often bringing back some old friend to breakfast 
with him. Careless exposure one morning brought on 
a chill which ran into pneumonia and a profuse diar- 
rhoea ; his feeble frame succumbed, and he died calmly 
on the 4th of April, one month from the date of his 



302 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

inauguration. In his last incoherent utterance he 
seemed to be enjoining upon another the trust which 
slipped from his ghostly grasp : "Sir, I wish you to un- 
derstand the true principles of the government ; I wish 
them carried out; I ask nothing more." 

This was the first time that death had invaded the 
White House or smote the chief of the people, and so 
sudden was the shock that the nation seemed stunned 
by this calamity. Harrison was loved by all the people, 
and even party opponents acknowledged his benev- 
olence and high purpose. The tokens of national sor- 
row and respect were universal. At the capital the 
obsequies of the dead President, hastily arranged, were 
as splendid as so quiet a season would permit in that 
pilgrim city, and pageants followed in more populous 
places to pay imaginary honors. The 7th of April was 
the day of the funeral. The north portico of the man- 
sion was hung with unaccustomed black. They who 
had hustled in its halls with headlong zeal a few days 
before trod gently and spoke in whispers. The body, 
in its leaden casket, was taken from the East Room 
where it had lain in state on a bier heaped with flowers ; 
it was placed in an open funeral car, which stood at 
the north portico, covered with black velvet and drawn 
by six white horses, each with its colored groom. A 
wailing of trumpets arose, inexpressibly mournful, and 
a beating of muffled drums, as the military escort began 
its march down the avenue with arms reversed. The 
sky was overcast, and only a stray sunbeam from the 
clouds would shine upon the sable car with its nod- 
ding plumes as the procession moved eastward in slow 
array, minute-guns firing. Rounding the deserted Cap- 
itol, whose eastern steps, where Harrison so lately 
stood, led upward, as a mourner might fancy, like 



DEATH OF HARRISON 303 

Jacob's ladder, it approached and entered the Congres- 
sional burying ground. Here the present obsequies 
ended. The last expression of Harrison's waxen face 
was gentle and serene. 

Harrison died honorably poor, as became his career. 
Congress, when it met, made an appropriation for his 
funeral expenses, and voted a year's salary to his 
widow. Here and in many States the legislatures tes- 
tified respect for his memory. At the request of Cin- 
cinnati friends, the late President's remains were re- 
moved in the summer to his family home ; and at North 
Bend, near the Ohio's bank, the good gray head was 
laid quietly to rest. 



"Heaven," says Wise, of Virginia, alluding, long 
years after, to Harrison's death, "saved him from the 
fate of Actaeon; for, had he lived until Congress met, 
he would have been devoured by the divided pack of his 
own dogs." The figure is a striking one, but not ap- 
propriate. The new President had his leash well in 
hand; they of the pack that hunted were scenting the 
game ; the few that barked could not have harmed him. 
Harrison was strong without Virginia, his native State, 
and his rock of strength was the solid confidence of the 
Union. The people's candidate in the critical times at 
hand would have proved himself, had he lived, the 
people's friend. It must not be forgotten that he was 
trained a civilian not less than a soldier; a party man, 
though a moderate one, and by no means incompetent 
to his task, which was to conciliate confidence. The 
country has had abler men than Harrison, but few 
whose death, coming when it did, was in so real a sense 
a public calamity. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JOHN TYLER. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-seventh Congress. April 4, 1841-March 
3, 1843. — § II. Period of Twenty-eighth Congress. March 4, 
1843-March 3, 1845- 

THE heir-apparent of blood royal may come 
some day to the throne, and royal title itself 
turns by premeditation upon the accidents of 
human life ; but no Vice-President of the United States 
ever was or ever will be voted for in a genuine expecta- 

l84X tion that he will be more than a Vice-Presi- 

ApriL dent while the four years last. 

But now the contingency had happened, and, for the 
first time, Heaven's stroke had fallen on the highest in- 
cumbent of this great Republic as though he had been 
the humblest of the people. The supreme executive 
title devolved in a moment without the intervention of 
a voice or vote. John Tyler ruled in the place of 
the good Harrison. Who is John Tyler ? it was asked. 
And what is the status of one who succeeds to the va- 
cant place under such circumstances? For all were 
stunned and bewildered in this first shock of affliction. 
The successful Whigs could not realize at once the 
magnitude of their loss. But it was true that they had 
conquered by the uncertain sign of promising some 
change for the better; and they had really hung the 
whole framework of their principles upon the thread of 
a single human life, and that a frail one ; they had sup- 



TYLER'S PAST RECORD 305 

posed, and with reason, that Harrison's judgment 
would accord with the common sense of the situation. 
It was now time to scrutinize the record of John Tyler 
as it had not been scrutinized before. This youngest of 
all Presidents ever to that date seated in office, fifty-one 
years of age when he took up his abode at the White 
House, was in no sense a national man nor even a sound 
Whig. Taken upon his antecedents, he was of those 
who skirt the border-line of parties close enough to 
tempt either to bid for him when in a strait. By his 
own statement his course had been "almost that of a 
neutral" up to the time when he took his seat in the 
United States Senate, though constantly in the public 
service from the time of turning his majority, whether 
as legislator, Congressman, or governor of his native 
State. But he voted in the Senate as an independent 
Democrat; and Clay himself in 1841 spoke bitterly of 
their twenty years of intimate friendship, during thir- 
teen years of which they had never voted together on a 
single question of principle. 

In principle, to speak truly, Tyler was consistent only 
in being for State rights and a southern man to the 
core. Though gifted with tact, courtly manners, and 
a pleasing temper, he had within him the impetuous 
spirit of a slave-driver. Northern needs and northern 
society he did not and could not comprehend ; his sym- 
pathies were not national, but to bend the nation to the 
ambition of his section. He was a Virginian of the 
later type, prouder of his State than the Union. "Do 
you believe," asked he, when the Missouri question was 
under debate, "that southern bayonets will ever be 
plunged in southern hearts?" In that debate he took 
the extreme ground, for so early a day, that Congress 
had no constitutional right to prohibit slavery in the 



306 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

territories; and we have already seen him in 1833, when 
South Carolina was in revolt, casting his solitary vote in 
the Senate against the bill for enforcing the supremacy 
of the Union. Jackson's heroic attitude on this latter 
occasion, rather than his interference with the National 
Bank, was what estranged Tyler from the Democratic 
party. Being a fluent and decidedly emotional writer 
and speaker, he was quite given to asseveration. His 
conscience, according to his own description, was ex- 
ceedingly tender ; but what seemed stranger still, it was 
sensitive to the trivialities of a dispute, while callous 
concerning the deeper moralities involved. It was a 
conscience of overburdened ingenuity, like Hogarth's 
machine for drawing the cork from a bottle. Thus, 
Tyler deplored the existence of slavery, but since it had 
been planted here without his fault he would tolerate no 
interference with it ; he thought nullification wrong, but 
it was a greater wrong to coerce a nullifying State; 
Benton's expunging resolution he utterly abhorred, not 
in the sense that the original censure of the President 
ought to stand, but because it was perjury, blasphemy, 
or some other terrible moral enormity for him to vote 
to expunge when the constitution expressly declared 
that "each house shall keep a journal." Such was the 
sacrificial disposition which statesmen showed to throw 
themselves under the wheels of that great Juggernaut 
of federal compact ; perish the heavens, sooner than per- 
mit the slightest crack in the precious porcelain be- 
queathed by our fathers. In fact, through Tyler's 
whole political career to this point one may discern the 
habit of moving upon fine and subtle distinctions, such 
as a special pleader delights in, a squirrel-like pro- 
pensity to leap from tree to tree without touching the 
ground. Like the squirrel's bushy tail, he carried his 



SLAVERY AND FREEDOM 307 

record behind him; and one agony of his conscience 
was to reconcile his later acts with his earlier, regard- 
less of the saying that only simpletons never change 
their opinions. 



It was high time to dissipate that pleasing spectral 
illusion that slavery was merely local in its influence, 
and concerned no State outside the southern 
galaxy. As a social principle, in fact, 
slavery was as contagious as freedom, and possessed 
the same power of expansion. Already had this in- 
stitution brought our federal government into direct 
collision with Great Britain and other European 
countries which had enlisted in the moral crusade; 
it struggled to preoccupy the virgin soil of national 
territory in place of freedom; it contended for the 
balance of national power; and the oldest and 
weightiest States of the Union were at this moment 
in serious controversy over the obligation which free- 
dom owed to rivet the chains of bondage. This last 
phase of the conflict deserves here a passing notice. 
Slaveholders claimed the right to retake such of their 
runaways as might have escaped into a free State; but 
did this compel free States to play the hound for the 
master, or to deprive free colored men of their liberty 
in a free jurisdiction, or to send their own white citi- 
zens to slave soil to suffer the vengeance of certain 
death, whose worst offence, even had they committed 
any, was to help a poor fellow-creature to become his 
own master, as God gave him the natural right? It 
was impossible that North and South in this era should 
harmonize on these points or even discuss them dispas- 
sionately; and what should impress posterity is, that 



308 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

slavery asked more of the Union, far more, than to be 
left alone, to use its own municipal authority to sustain 
its abhorred system. In these very years Governor 
Seward, of New York, was still in correspondence with 
southern State executives over the surrender of white 
citizens of the North as fugitives from justice on the 
charge of stealing slaves ; Georgia coupled a like requi- 
sition of her own to that from Virginia, which the 
Empire State refused to grant; and Virginia and South 
Carolina then combined to pass local laws, by way of 
retaliation, which exposed all New York vessels arriv- 
ing in their ports to the ignominy of search and the 
imprisonment of colored seamen. On the surrender, 
too, of fugitive slaves there was angry collision between 
free and slave States. 



The single-term theory of the Presidential office did 
not originate, as many have supposed, with the De- 
mocracy. It was a Whig theory, and the 
theory above all others, if not the only one, 
to which Harrison in his great campaign had commit- 
ted himself ; the theory which Tyler, too, then indorsed 
with a glittering and specious warmth of sentiment. 
By this early commitment the Whig hero meant to 
strengthen his protest against Jacksonian tendencies to 
autocratic dominion; but more than that he meant to 
assuage the secret bitterness of party leaders outranking 
him in point of public service who were loyally righting 
his battle. Before the Whigs came into power, every 
President, of whatever politics, had stood for his sec- 
ond term, and under him, necessarily, the party failed 
or maintained its ground. This appeal to the people 
midway in one's eight years' service, for approval or 






SINGLE-TERM THEORY 309 

disapproval, Jefferson had highly commended in prac- 
tice. But the Democrats presently borrowed this Whig 
lightning for their own purpose, and adopted the one- 
term maxim, in real effect, as a sort of corollary to the 
spoils maxim of rotation in office, and because, in truth, 
after Jackson's death, no one led them conspicuous 
above all others. 

There is very little, in plain truth, to commend such 
a maxim apart from the special circumstances to which 
it may apply. Popular experience still favors a second 
term where good purposes are to be carried to a fuller 
fruition and the Executive who returns to the polls is 
trusted. The critic of our constitution on this point 
can only regret that the written law fixes no limit, but 
trusts to precedent alone and the common jealousy, 
that the second term shall be the last. As for Tyler's 
eager prevarication on this point we may treat it lightly, 
for an expectant estate differs from a reversion ; but his 
grave blunder was in not better apprehending that true 
policy, if not honor, dictated that he should follow 
closely on the lines his dead leader had marked and 
forego ambitious aspirations which there was not one 
chance in a hundred for gratifying. First in striking 
out to be re-elected, next in assuming a co-ordinate 
power to legislate against the will of Congress, Tyler 
defiled Harrison's sepulchre, and after committing him- 
self to Whig ideas acted like the stubbornest of Jack- 
sonians. Jackson himself had not vetoed party meas- 
ures without a keen regard to good policy and the 
party welfare. No one who knew John Tyler believed 
that his course was ruled by a sensitive conscience, no 
one took his written reasons for the true and only ones. 
His temper was fanned into a flame, his vanity dazzled, 
his good-nature abused by the clique about him until the 



310 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

giant-killer fancied himself growing into a giant him- 
self. To kill Clay and be elected for another term was 
the gravitating law of this whole unprincipled admin- 
istration. 

For the first time in American history a President 
deserted the party which elected him, and after failing 
signally to recruit a party of his own marched over to 
the enemy. Consequently, to "Tylerize" has been a 
word of reproach in our politics ever since. His excuse 
was that the Whigs would not support his measures; 
but his duty was to support theirs, and the more so, 
since accident gave him an authority to which they 
never meant to exalt him. The Whigs soon saw the 
ghost he was pursuing. Unseduced by the patronage 
he could offer, they rallied round Clay as though to 
atone for their former neglect, and the Whig press 
throughout the Union ran up the Clay flag when the 
peerless Senator retired from Congress. 

But the volatile Virginian had already placed a fire- 
brand behind each camp which would soon force par- 
ties from their position. That firebrand was the Texas 
slaveholders' annexation. Abhorrent as the whole 
scheme had been to North and West, and the great ma- 
jority, indeed, of our population, it drew the sympathy, 
active or inert, of a large fraction of the South, whose 
institution felt more and more the need of some new 
guaranty against the assaults of the abolitionists. To 
our planters this union of Texas with the United States 
seemed natural, like the commingling of kindred drops 
of water, for this colony was of their own planting; it 
was Tennessee and our States on the gulf that con- 
quered the Mexican army at San Jacinto. But natural 
gravitation would not have absorbed Texas into the 
American Union in fifty years; for annexation meant 



THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH 311 

sectional and not national advantage in this age, and the 
bitterest heartburning. 

The effort had been made to infect the whole country 
with this Texas fever and it had failed. There was no 
sanction from Congress, no favorable expression of 
public sentiment in favor of annexation; the whole 
movement of the Tyler guard in that direction was 
secret and stealthy, like a night-march. 



The Democratic conventions of 1844, one of which 
nominated James K. Polk, and the other John Tyler, 
are memorable for the transmission of their proceedings 
by electric telegraph. Congress having lately appro- 
priated thirty thousand dollars to test Morse's inven- 
tion, a wire was run between Washington and Balti- 
more, and communication fully opened three days be- 
fore. Messages of congratulation had sped by this oc- 
cult messenger, but the first practical use of the spark 
was to give Congress the news of these two conventions. 
Every half-hour the strange little machine at the east 
end of the Capitol reported the progress of meetings 
held forty miles away, and written bulletins posted up 
on the wall of the rotunda gave quick intelligence of the 
news. Silas Wright was the first of mortal men to 
receive and decline a nomination by electric telegraph,* 
and the event had its public bearing on affairs. A new 
social force was born of the nineteenth century, — the 
dissemination and collection of news on the instant. 
Jove's own messenger sped from this date for mankind. 
By another year plans were developed for extending 
the electric wires to New York and more distant points, 
making great changes in the modes of journalism and 
* For Vice-President upon the Polk ticket. 



3 i2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

business, and already were predicted electric lights, 
electric signals, and electric fire-alarms as future adap- 
tations of this most magical and mysterious of natural 
agents. 



When the Texas joint resolution came back to the 
House with the Senate amendment tacked to it, con- 
science Whigs made a last effort to load down the 
whole subject till the session expired. But the Benton 
alternative made the bill all the more palatable to north- 
ern and western Democrats, and the House quickly con- 
curred by a larger majority than the measure had com- 
manded in its original form. On the last day of Feb- 
ruary, at sunset, both Houses had taken final action, 

and within twenty- four hours President Tyler 
Marctr i- 3 . affixed his approval. A. hundred guns from 

the Capitol announced the success of Texas 
annexation ; but many a bloodier salute was fired before 
that success proved substantial. 

To glance for a moment at the meaning of this joint 
resolution. It not only consented to the erection of 
Texas into a State for admission into the Union with 
a republican form of government, but pledged the 
faith of the United States to permit new States to be 
formed from that jurisdiction not exceeding four, be- 
sides Texas, should Texas assent to it, and to admit 
these additional States into the Union hereafter with or 
without slavery, as the people of each State might pre- 
fer, if formed below the Missouri Compromise line of 
36 30', but if formed above that line, without slavery 
at all. The tiger in the jungle of this fair territory 
was the adjustment of boundaries with Mexico ; but we 
adopted Texas and her circumstances together, and dis- 



TEXAS ANNEXATION 313 

tinctly assumed that difficult function. Any constitu- 
tion formed by the people of Texas was to be laid be- 
fore Congress for its final action by the first of January 
next. Such was the first and original branch of this 
joint resolution, embracing a consent under conditions 
given in advance, which the President might submit to 
the republic of Texas by way of an offer from the 
United States for immediate acceptance. But now, by 
force of the Benton alternative, the President might at 
his discretion negotiate with Texas clean terms of ad- 
mission and submit the results hereafter. 

Only three days were left to round out Tyler's offi- 
cial term. The second thought of Congress had appar- 
ently been to commit this whole business, with its dread 
responsibilities, to the incoming President, whose sober 
reticence was confided in. Polk had already pledged 
himself to "immediate reannexation," but this was a 
question of methods, and even Jacksonians disliked to 
give Tyler credit for anything. Benton and the Van 
Burenites had a last hope that the second alternative 
would be chosen, and, in fact, Benton afterwards as- 
serted that Polk privately promised to choose it. But 
Tyler was too slippery, too intent upon the prize of his 
calling, to be stripped thus of his glory. He improved 
the last hours of his opportunity, and with Calhoun, it 
appears, to second him. The discretion given under 
the resolve he at once exercised himself; he chose the 
first alternative, which was what zealous annexationists 
wanted, and invited Texas to accept the conditions and 
enter without further transactions. Polk, perhaps, was 
willing to escape so easily the dilemma which the Dem- 
ocrats had arranged for him. He put upon this pred- 
ecessor the odium of annexing Texas by the surest but 
most outrageous means, and Tyler, in return, put upon 



3H EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Polk the odium of handling consequences so that war 
with Mexico followed. On Monday, the last day of 
his term, and the same day that he vacated the White 
House, Tyler took the responsibility without a qualm, 
by despatching a nephew, who spurred off with hot 
speed, bearing with him the official despatches which 
tendered to the lone star republic the proposal of the 
United States for immediate union. 



John Tyler, as the reader will infer, had far more 
talent, as well as independence, than the Whigs had 
credited him with; and a disposition, moreover, which 
was hurtful enough when once astray, to occupy the 
full advantage of his strange opportunity. As a states- 
man and administrator he was much above the average, 
having industry, persistency, zeal to carry his point, 
and a light touch and fertility in resources which were 
worthy of nobler achievements. Like the immortal 
Virginians in whose galaxy he wished to be set, he 
was a thrifty and economical manager in affairs; he 
scrutinized closely the public expenditures, and held 
public- agents to strict account. 

Tyler's prime preserved to him a youthful aspect. 
He had a fresh complexion and an animated face, was 
fair and delicate to look upon, and a favorite with 
women. Tall and slender, standing six feet high, with 
silky brown hair which thinned out slowly, a high, 
retreating forehead, facile and expressive blue eyes, a 
prominent beak of Roman model, a small and firm-set 
mouth, and a delicate chin, he had an air about him of 
patrician polish and high breeding. He dressed well, 
and his plaited shirt-front was adorned with a costly 
pin. His general impression was graceful and pleas- 



TYLER'S CHARACTER 315 

ing rather than strong; in his mien was something 
melodramatic, as though he either felt or exaggerated 
for effect beyond the common range of emotion. He 
was genial, and sometimes hilarious; prided himself 
much upon elegant hospitality and his skill in smooth- 
ing difficulties. He could entertain happily. He had 
a smile, a silvery voice, a flattering address ; he seldom 
quarrelled openly, but could not be bent by force. Of 
gentle pedigree, he was best won by gentleness. The 
versatility of his politics has been shown in this narra- 
tive, and his eulogist observes that he had always the 
happy faculty of appearing conspicuous at the right 
moment on all the great national questions. The pen- 
dulum of his political morals vacillated between good 
and bad; and he pursued the game of politics with as 
keen a zest as Clay, though in qualities for leadership 
unworthy of comparison with the man against whom 
he measured himself. But if Tyler was but a sparrow 
for building up a national party, he could kill cock- 
robin, and Clay and Van Buren both fell pierced by his 
arrow. Tyler's keen relish of life gave him, in short, 
a strong hold upon it ; and he never knew the pangs of 
poverty. His animal spirits were unfailing; his tears 
passed off like summer showers, and if he mourned 
the dead he loved the living best. 

The apostate, however wise or amiable, fills a spotted 
page in history, for in the long run even fidelity to 
honest error wins more respect than levity as between 
error and truth. The most signal measures of his 
administration yielded him no lasting renown. Web- 
ster made the Ashburton treaty the excuse for linger- 
ing in his cabinet and received the honors of that ar- 
rangement; Calhoun, whose influence gained the as- 
cendant, decked himself, and quite unfairly, with the 



316 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

whole plumage of Texas annexation ; even the glory of 
Tyler's bank vetoes was a negative one, based upon 
fallacious reasons and dimmed by dark reproach of 
duplicity. Whigs and Democrats together despoiled 
him of his fame after he had left office, so that Polk's 
memory was no sweeter than Clay's to the ex-President. 
His retirement was permanent until a last crucial test 
proved that his heart was with the South and not the 
Union. Wise, his wayward counsellor, has written 
kindly of him, as of the weaker vessel; but except for 
the praises of cabinet officers uttered while they were 
part of it, Tyler's administration was never eulogized 
except by himself while he lived and after his death by 
his own sons. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES KNOX POLK. 

§ I. Period of Twenty-Ninth Congress. March 4, 1845-March 
3, 1847.— § II. The Mexican War. May, 1846-September, 
1847. — § III. Period of Thirtieth Congress. March 4, 1847- 
March 3, 1849. 

JAMES K. POLK was not a man of soft and smirk- 
ing, or even impartial phrases, but stern and reso- 
lute, having a sense of sole allegiance to the party 
which had elevated him to command. His mind 
was incapable of taking in the broader relations of 
things. What he went for he fetched; his platform 
was sacred as a creed, and opposition to that creed 
called for compulsion. Born in Mecklenburg County, 
North Carolina, the oldest of ten children, and the son 
of a plain but sturdy farmer who removed to Tennessee 
early in this century and became one of the pioneers in 
the valley of the Cumberland, he grew up with that in- 
fluential State, and, rising superior to his earlier oppor- 
tunities, gained a fair classical education, after which 
he studied law, and, like so many of his fellow southern- 
ers, went from law into politics. He entered Congress 
when thirty years of age, a devoted Jacksonian. His 
Democracy came honestly, for his father had been one 
of Jefferson's strong admirers. Constancy to the star 
of Jackson's fortunes brought him his sure reward; and 
as Speaker and House leader under the administration 
of his illustrious fellow-citizen, he gained respect as a 



318 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

safe partisan. He could pull and sweat in the party 
traces; and though no originator of measures, he de- 
fended them ably and was unwearied in the despatch 
of routine business. After fourteen years of such ex- 
perience he had left the scenes of our capital to share 
the vicissitudes of State politics during Jackson's re- 
tirement. Here he was a governor, once elected and 
twice defeated ; but his plain and consistent Democracy, 
his views on the Texas question, and Jackson's per- 
sonal friendship withal, proved him the man that dis- 
cordant elements might unite upon. And so, while 
seeking the secondary distinction of Vice-President, 
Polk had the first and greater bestowed upon him; 
and on the familiar steps of the capitol, after a six 
years' absence, he took the oath of office as his great 
patron had done before him. 

A man of middle height, of plain and unassuming 
manners and conversation, with a grave and rather 
stern expression of countenance which was sometimes 
lit up by a pleasant smile, the new President inspired 
no awe, and there was nothing about him to recall the 
dignity and conscious force of the superb commander 
whose glory he reflected. But Polk understood well his 
place and what the Democrats expected of him. His 
Congressional training fitted him for despatching the 
public business, and his whole habit of thought made 
him diligent, systematic, faithful to his purpose, and 
concentrated upon carrying out the policy he had been 
the chosen instrument to accomplish. He heeded, more- 
over, all the rights, all the points, on his own side, as 
an even-paced lawyer will guard and fight for his client, 
who is not troubled with a discriminating perception 
of the rights of an adversary. Admirably fitted did he 
show himself as executor of a prearranged policy by 



POLK AS PRESIDENT 319 

details, though he fell short, as events proved, of that 
ideality in statesmanship which seizes, controls, and 
harmonizes the great army of voters and leads to new 
fields and fresh conquests. Men about him who were 
capable of judging pronounced him one of the best of 
administrators, clear and persistent in his course, the 
master of his own cabinet, and not ruled by the ablest 
of his advisers. One trait which gave him this con- 
trolling advantage was his power of secrecy, which 
was so great that those whose official intercourse was 
closest with him were unable to trace the course of his 
thoughts. Polk, too, had respect for his place, and, 
unlike his predecessor, who was always defending, ex- 
plaining, and equivocating, he shut his lips against his 
worst traducers. In private life he was pure and up- 
right, honest as the day (for men will be thus scrupu- 
lous who are ready to take advantage in their official 
relations), a scorner of bribes, and rigid in his religious 
observances. His wife, an accomplished woman of 
the strictest Presbyterian faith, strained the etiquette 
of the White House to her standard of decorum. This 
married pair had no children and their domestic habits 
were simple. 

Such was the "scourge of God," foreordained, as 
it might almost seem, to fulfil the ends of the new 
American spirit of territorial manifest destiny, and, 
reckless of all intervening rights, carry the flag of our 
republic across the Sabine and over the continent till 
it swept a broad area to the Pacific seas. No former 
President, perhaps, at the outset of his administration, 
ever had so clear and positive a perception of what he 
meant to do, and none ever despatched his ambitious 
programme more thoroughly. In a private conversation 
with one of his chosen cabinet, which is still preserved, 



3 2o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Polk announced his purpose soon after he had taken 
the oath of office. "There are four great measures," 
said he, with emphasis, striking his thigh forcibly as 
he spoke, "which are to be measures of my administra- 
tion : one, a reduction of the tariff ; another, the inde- 
pendent treasury ; a third, the settlement of the Oregon 
boundary question ; and, lastly, the acquisition of Cali- 
fornia." And history should record that Polk entered 
on his official duties with the immovable purpose of 
carrying every one of these measures into effect, and 
before his term had ended accomplished them all. 



The Oregon settlement, mutually honorable and ad- 
vantageous to Great Britain and the United States, was 
hastened by a strange climax of affairs, in which each 
negotiating party found itself too weak to take advan- 
tage of the other, while both were anxious to retreat 
from an embroilment. Polk's administration, as we 
shall soon see, had another war on its hands already; 
while Sir Robert Peel tottered under the obloquy of 
his corn-law repeal, that reform which served for his 
noblest public monument and his tomb. Of frozen 
Oregon the better part was ours, and the last mile- 
stone of the American Union was peacefully placed at 
the Pacific. 



The pacifying temper of the Peel ministry through 
these Oregon troubles was due in some degree to the 
disposition shown by our new rulers on the tariff ques- 
tion. England's splendid peer, who fell from power 
because he dared leave his own rank to lift up the 
workingman, was intent, most of all, upon the free- 



TARIFF REDUCTION 321 

trade policy whose successful establishment has re- 
versed British intercourse with the rest of mankind. 
The triumph of Cobden and cheap bread, under the 
Peel alliance, would throw open the queen's gates to 
our western granaries and admit the American farmer 
to an immense foreign market which hitherto had been 
barred against him. Fresh free-trade breezes swept 
through the Mississippi valley, welcomed this time by 
the vast food-producing region of the northwest, and 
not by southern staple-raisers alone, those pitiless foes 
of a protective tariff. A great trading and carrying 
interest by sea and land felt the light stir ; for by what 
surer means could the export of American grain, bread- 
stuffs, and staples be made to thrive than by inviting 
British commodities back in exchange by a scale of du- 
ties more favorable ? Thus was the free-trade tendency, 
like the protective before it, a rule of expediency to be 
accommodated to the times, though in no sense to make 
a governing theory. Unlike Great Britain, ours was a 
country which contained in itself all the resources of 
independent existence ; it was, moreover, a new country, 
with infantile industries which needed fostering for 
some time longer. The Emperor Napoleon, when 
asked if he would countenance free trade for France, is 
said to have responded : "We are fifty years behind 
England. Give me skill and experience ; place me upon 
an equal footing; and I will try the experiment." 

President Polk in his first annual message recom- 
mended a change in the tariff favorable to this new 
situation of affairs, and his Secretary of the 
Treasury reported to the same effect. Their DeC e 8 ^b e r. 
argument assailed the tariff of 1842 as a dis- 
crimination against agriculture to swell the profits of 
the manufacturers, and they denounced the principle 



322 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

of protection; they claimed that import duties should 
be adjusted to the necessities of the revenue. They | 
took issue with the Whigs and with Webster on the 
assertion that a high tariff insured high wages to the 
workman and kept him employed; it was the mill- 
owner, they replied, and not his workman who took 
the extra profits. By such arguments the party in 
power prevailed, alluding as little as possible to the 
free-trade parallel in England; its opponents, on the 
other hand, trying to arouse prejudice by taunts of a 
British alliance. 



Two points are observable in the rapid and impor- 
tant work of this Congressional session : first, that 
Texas, whose representatives cast their votes 
with the rest, was now a State in the Union ; 
next, that the incorporation of that State had speedily 
involved the United States in a war with Mexico. The 
administration and its friends were courageous cer- 
tainly, or venturesome, in adhering to their new tariff 
bill after the war had actually begun and more than 
ten millions had been appropriated for maintaining our 
arms. They believed, doubtless, that because the con- 
test of republics was so unequal the stronger would 
easily prevail; but there is a strength in desperation 
to save one's native soil which may humble even con- 
querors. Money, they thought, would purchase peace, 
would purchase territory, by bribing at least the leaders 
of this poor people; but the leaders heeded the public 
voice, and the people, though their republic be mis- 
governed, are rarely craven enough to barter for gold 
their country's cause. Mexico, though torn with intes- 
tine quarrels like all the other Spanish- American coun- 



THE MEXICAN WAR 323 

tries to the south of us, preserved the spark of liberty 
and the remnant of her old Spanish pride. In fine, if 
we were to conquer Mexico, we must conquer her like 
Cortez. This mingled race of Aztecs and Aztec con- 
querors had too little cold prudence to purchase a pusil- 
lanimous peace. But, besides all this, the rapacity of 
our annexationists was already too great for any peace- 
ful sacrifice to have saved Mexico from mutilation. 
Texas, indeed, was already torn from her ; whether that 
province should go to the United States or remain in- 
dependent had been the only practical issue these last 
four years ; had that been the only prize, we might have 
borne it off in peace after all our perfidy. But "pur- 
posely," as President Tyler had stated it in his Texas 
treaty message, the boundary of Texas had been kept 
open for negotiation with Mexico. This meant that 
he adopted the fraud of the Texas revolutionists in 
voting to themselves the whole domain of Mexico to 
the Rio Grande, whereas the original and uniform 
southwestern boundary of the Texas province was 
admitted to be the river Nueces and its interior valley, 
an area sufficient to comprise all they had colonized. 
It meant still more than this, that the glut of our slave- 
holders would not be satiated without a new boundary 
line across the continent which would give them New 
Mexico and the long-coveted region of California. 
Polk's first hope was like his predecessor's, that Cali- 
fornia, so remote from the seat of the Mexican govern- 
ment, might be bought ; that if our terminus was fated 
to advance, the terminus of our sister republic would 
accommodate and recede. But all such hopes were a 
delusion. The wolf seemed now our emblem, as of 
the splendid republic which Romulus founded; but 
Mexico was not the lamb dumb before her shearers. 



3 2 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

Neither of these southern-bred Presidents felt that 
compunction for the rights of the weaker which makes 
just men hesitate. 



The Mexican war was fought in a region where the 
new system of railway as also of telegraphic connec- 
tion had found no development. By the 
September. tmie tnat war na d fairly begun some twelve 
hundred miles of telegraph were in operation 
under Kendall's energetic operation; but its chief 
spread was northward from Washington into the pop- 
ulous Middle and Eastern States. War news was 
thus disseminated, but not official despatches between 
our capital and the seat of war. But as this Congress 
had the honor of establishing, after long delay, the 
Smithsonian Institution, in the interest of science, so 
had its predecessor accomplished something in the di- 
rection of increasing the popularity and usefulness of 
the post-office. Rowland Hill's reforms in England, 
and the new enterprise of the electric telegraph, which 
the United States was asked to buy out, but did not, 
lent a strong impulse in the direction of cheap postage. 
In place of the old letter rates graded from 6 to 25 
cents for each piece of paper according to a table of 
graded distances, new rates nearly uniform were fixed 
by weight at 5 cents per half ounce for less than 300 
miles, and 10 cents for longer distances. Private ex- 
presses had carried much mail matter, because of their 
responsibility and greater swiftness, but the new law 
monopolized the business for the United States on all 
mail routes ; prepayment, too, being now required, here 
as abroad, postage-stamps came soon into use. With 
the era of the Mexican war the long and carefully- 



TWO GREAT GENERALS 325 

written letter package, folded over and sealed, began 
to decline; while the Morse invention, though useless 
for our military and naval operations, was found at 
once of great benefit in aiding the arrest of fugitives, 
and affording to our busy merchants the latest price 
quotations and the latest foreign arrivals, and the latest 
intelligence, besides, which reached Washington from 
the far-off battle-fields.* 



Two distinguished commanders of kindred politics, 
natives of America, born in the same illustri- 
ous mother State, and serving as soldiers 1846-47. 
under the same stars and stripes, could 
hardly have been more unlike in personal traits and 
military methods. Winfield Scott was the outrank- 
ing officer, being already commander-in-chief of our 
army at the time when war was declared; and he has 
given himself full credit in his late memoirs for con- 
curring in the detail of Taylor, a subordinate officer, 
to command at Corpus Christi when matters became 
critical with Mexico. Zachary Taylor was at that time 
a brigadier-general by brevet, but in lineal rank no 
more than a colonel. Entering at early manhood into 
the military service of the United States, among the 
regulars, he had won gradual renown as a brave, ef- 
ficient, and trustworthy officer; and yet his record was 
by no means distinguished. Once he had sturdily re- 
pelled the Indian chief Tecumseh while in command 
of a frontier fort at the northwest ; but that same war 

* For important historical material contained in President 
Polk's diary and correspondence, which throw new light upon 
the Mexican war and Polk's administration, see this author's 
articles in Atlantic Monthly, August and September, 1895, which 
were republished in Historical Briefs, 121, 139. 



326 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 



of 1812 brought him no such conspicuous laurels as 
those of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane to the gallant 
Scott; while his long record in the ensuing years of 
peace showed nothing more memorable than sharing 
with others of our generals in the baffled pursuit of the 
Florida Seminoles. Yet of these two Virginians, so 
unequal in distinction when Texas entered the Ameri- 
can Union, Taylor was somewhat the older, being at 
the outbreak of the Mexican war, in fact, full sixty-one 
years of age, though of sound health still, and a rugged 
constitution. Scott appreciated this, as well as Tay- 
lor's somewhat rigid disregard of forms. According- 
ly, when detailing him to command on the Mexican 
frontier, the commander took care to provide him, un- 
solicited, with a staff officer of modest manners, his 
exact complement; for he knew Taylor (as he says) 
to be slow of thought, hesitating in speech, and unused 
to the pen. To this admirable combination of general 
and chief of staff he ascribes, with no little pique and 
very scant justice, the train of good military fortune 
which followed. 

Taylor's bright star, brighter than his own while it 
lasted, was indeed one of the sorest tribulations to 
which our autocrat of the regular army had to school 
himself; for Winfield Scott, with all his noble and 
estimable traits, was of a vain and irritable disposition, 
such as could brook no rival; and unfortunately too 
he had been long in training for President. Scott as- 
pired to be first in war and in peace besides. In mili- 
tary honors he well deserved supremacy; for he was 
prompt, far-reaching, and skilful, of consummate 
experience both in the bureau and field, thorough, fear- 
less, and self-confident in fight, a master of the compli- 
cated details of moving and managing, as armies in 



SCOTT AND TAYLOR 327 

those days were moved and managed. He had, more- 
over, a wide range of acquaintance with our army 
officers of every rank, and with America's most eminent 
statesmen besides. But the jealousy and imperious 
temper of Scott's nature were fostered by long military 
habits in a high and even the highest grade. As he 
had quarrelled all the way up the line of promotion, 
with Generals Wilkinson and Gaines, with Andrew 
Jackson, with De Witt Clinton, with John Quincy 
Adams, — so while he remained of pre-eminent rank 
in this new war, except for the President himself, he 
continued to quarrel to his manifest disadvantage, 
being rarely in personal sympathy with the adminis- 
tration. He was of impatient spirit, arbitrary, over- 
bearing; though not always without reasonable cause 
for vexation and irritability. All this placed Scott in 
strong contrast with Taylor, who was beloved by all 
who served under him, for unaffected simplicity and 
kindness of heart, and took little interest in political 
rivalries. Once made known to the country, the latter 
struck strongly the popular chord. Taylor's age won 
respect ; and when advanced age was once perceived to 
be perfectly consistent with valor, strong judgment, 
and excellent sense, none who knew him or served 
under him could envy greatly his quick advance to 
illustrious honors. Scott himself was too generous- 
hearted not to accord to this veteran warrior, who had 
grown gray in the modest performance of duty, that 
true basis of a great character, pure, uncorrupted 
morals, combined with indomitable courage and a high 
purpose — at the same time that with envious ridicule 
he disparaged Taylor's moderate learning and converse 
with the social world, in comparison with his own, and 
deduced rigidity of ideas as the logical consequence. 



328 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

But Taylor, if ignorant for one of his exalted rank in 
some respects, had that good gift of common sense and 
sagacity, and that sympathetic tenderness of heart, for 
which learning alone is no substitute. And hence of 
two able generals developed by the Mexican war, 
equally sincere and patriotic, the one built up formid- 
able barriers to his own ambition, while the other, with 
scarce an obstacle in his path, attained the highest re- 
ward his countrymen could bestow, and when dying 
left behind no personal enemy in the world. 

In personal appearance these warriors bore no re- 
semblance. Taylor was of a moderate figure, inclin- 
ing to corpulence. He had no manly beauty in his 
countenance; but his features, swarthy and weather- 
beaten, though homely in repose, would relax with a 
reassuring smile, which kindled from the eye and was 
wholly genuine; his whole aspect when animated was 
intelligent, benevolent, and full of good humor. But 
Scott towered in any crowd, distinguished by his hand- 
some and leonine face and proud bearing; he was the 
very personification of an illustrious soldier. His 
pictures showed him as he preferred to sit for a por- 
trait, wearing the full insignia of his exalted rank, 
suitable for parade, while those of Taylor arrayed him 
rather in fatigue cap and modest undress; for while 
the one loved pomp and ceremony, and relied upon 
plumes and epaulets to add to his impressive effect, the 
other dressed only for comfort, and had nothing of the 
coxcomb or martinet in his composition. He, in fact, 
was as incorrigible in simplicity as his superior officer 
was in parade; and the contrast of the two chieftains 
on this point afforded their junior officers much amuse- 
ment. Taylor, so the story ran in camp, never put 
on full uniform but twice in the whole Mexican war, 



SCOTT AND TAYLOR 329 

both being unfortunate occasions — on one of which 
the flag officer of the naval squadron and he reversed 
their usual habits of dress to accommodate the preju- 
dices of one another, and met for a prearranged inter- 
view with embarrassing apologies. On the field of 
action "Old Zack," as the soldiers liked to call him, 
rarely wore anything to indicate his rank, or even that 
he was an officer at all ; all his men, however, knew him 
well. His retinue made no display. But Scott, 
whose sobriquet was "Fuss and Feathers," wore, 
from cockade to spur, the full regulation uniform, on 
all occasions of form, and expected to be honored by 
the army in return. At the seat of war, whenever he 
inspected his lines his intention was announced in ad- 
vance, and he would appear punctually on the hour, 
mounted on his charger and splendidly dressed, with 
his staff officers equipped to correspond and riding be- 
hind him in their proper order — as many of them as 
he could spare for the occasion. The whole body of 
troops, with officers posted each in his proper place 
of rank, was drawn up to salute the chief as he rode by 
with his retinue, sitting erect and magnificent in his 
saddle, his superb figure set off by sword, gilt buttons, 
epaulets, and a black chapeau with waving feathers — 
a commander indeed, and almost a conqueror by the 
force of his imposing presence. Scott in repose bore no 
little resemblance to a lion or to some huge mastiff. 

In battle, too, as may well be inferred, the methods 
of these heroes were quite different. Both were fear- 
less ; but Taylor's exposure of his person to danger, his 
courage in assuming oppressive responsibilities, was 
something wonderful. Where the iron hail fell 
thickest he would ride hither and thither, surveying the 
scene calmly and giving in person the needful orders; 



330 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

or he would sit sidewise upon his horse,"01d Whitey," 
as though the animal were a sofa, so as to get a good 
range for his glass. Nervous volunteers and recruits 
who had never been under fire were inspired by the old 
man's presence, as he thus identified himself with his 
troops; for Taylor always looked upon the fight 
through his own eyes, using staff officers or dispensing 
with them as the turn of action might require. Scott, 
on the other hand, while exacting the most scrupulous 
respect and deference to himself, aimed constantly to 
give each officer in return who served under him the 
just allowance of duty and chance for distinguished 
gallantry according to his rank ; and acting by rule he 
would move the whole machine forward with system 
and precision. He used more than Taylor did the eyes 
of his staff officers, and knowing his own importance, 
avoided personal exposure. Instead of giving orders 
on the spur of the moment, to meet the aspect of each 
fresh emergency, he prepared his plans deliberately and 
sent his written orders about, careful compositions, 
with an ostentatious pride that history should say that 
what he wrote down he accomplished. He had a liter- 
ary style of his own in official reports, pungent, posi- 
tive, and not without the marks of scholarship; while 
Taylor's dispatches were brief and pithy like a Spar- 
tan's, and, in spite of Scott's slurs, it is probable that he 
composed them. Taylor's methods, in a word, were 
unique and picturesque, fitted for striking some great 
blow and winning at odds a battle that would turn the 
scale, while Scott's comprehended the operations of a 
whole war. Scott, in fine, was looked up to and trusted 
with good reason ; he had his kind side, but he ruled by 
force and discipline. He had, moreover, his blind side, 
for he was vain-glorious, fond of flattery, and jealous 



MEXICO CONQUERED 331 

outside of his profession ; while Taylor's more amiable 
ambition and even his obstinate whims endeared him 
to all who served under him ; he cared tenderly for his 
men as men, and they loved him tenderly in return. 

Army nicknames do not compass the epitome of 
character, but they hit the nail somewhere ; and so was 
it with the contrasting titles we have mentioned, 
"Rough and Ready," and "Fuss and Feathers." The 
point of each epithet was obvious, but of course it did 
the latter hero injustice, as with any other ruler who 
does not rule by sympathy. A young subaltern of this 
war, whose military star was at no late day to outshine 
these conspicuous luminaries by reason of exploits on 
a scale far more tremendous, has left in his own 
memoirs a just conception of the contrast these com- 
manders presented in the field. His record may be 
trusted, for he served under both Scott and Taylor. 
"With their opposite characteristics," he writes, "both 
were great and successful soldiers; both were true, 
patriotic, and upright in all their dealings." * 



By this time Scott's entrance into the Mexican capi- 
tal had been bulletined, and it was felt that 
the sister republic lay prostrate at our feet 1847. 
and at our mercy. Webster, on the Senate 
floor, had already proposed that no territory should be 
annexed at all, his plea being that this Union was 
scarcely powerful enough or virtuous enough to bear 
the weight of the acquisition. Such a proposal, as 
events moved, was only more Quixotic than that of 
Clay's Lexington resolutions, which allowed a moder- 
ate annexation. The one great plan which fitted the 
*iU. S. Grant's Memoirs, 139. 



332 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

political situation, that which gave the whole humane 
North and all opposers of this war common ground to 
unite upon, against the greed of slavery extension in 
which the war originated, was the Wilmot Proviso — 
the provision that all territory to be acquired from 
Mexico should be forever consecrated to freedom. This 
Wilmot Proviso was the one glorious idea engendered 
of the Twenty-ninth Congress. It offered to mediate 
between Whigs and the conscience Democrats. It pro- 
posed a sort of national penance and self-discipline for 
the sins already committed against a fellow-race and a 
neighboring republic. If adopted in season it must 
surely have stopped the wheels of war short of violent 
dismemberment. And not having been so adopted, 
it still offered the solid, the single political means of 
uniting the honest anti-slavery and anti-slave-propa- 
gating sentiment of the whole country, at the perilous 
crisis, upon legitimate and constitutional ground, most 
available and most essential to Congress. It was this 
practical adaptiveness to the times, whether the war 
stopped or whether it went on, whether acquisi- 
tion or no acquisition resulted, that made the Wilmot 
Proviso flame in the skies like Constantine's cross, so 
instantly hailed with delight through the more popu- 
lous range of the Union, though cursed by slave propa- 
gandists in the remote South. 

Of this famous Wilmot Proviso, David Wilmot, 
rural Pennsylvanian and Democrat of the last and the 
next House, was unquestionably the author ; or at least 
was author of an adaptation.* Not only did colleagues 
and contemporaries allow him whatever fame might 
accrue from giving to so important a proposal the pre- 

*The language of the Wilmot Proviso closely follows the Or- 
dinance of 1787, but adapts its language to the existing emergency. 



THE WILMOT PROVISO 333 

fix of his name, but he lectured this year and spoke in 
various meetings and conventions of other States for 
the cause, where he was introduced as "author of the 
proviso." At one of these meetings, in New York 
State, he related how he had first suggested the idea 
in a dinner-table conversation, and upon the approval 
of two friends, submitted it to a larger council of Dem- 
ocrats, and then, with their united assent, proposed it 
to the House as a rider to the war appropriation bill. 
"There goes the proviso," gallery visitors at the Capitol 
would whisper in these days, while the House was in 
session, pointing to a stout Dutch-built man of moder- 
ate height, with light hair and eyes, smooth face and 
florid complexion, who moved among the desks, 
slightly conscious of attracting notice, with a pleasing 
countenance. 

The Northern dissensions which the Mexican war 
bred in our Democracy, and the whole crafty policy of 
the administration, portended political disaster. Those 
dissensions widened rapidly under the wedge of the 
Wilmot Proviso; in New York State, more especially, 
where Marcy's influence was that of a "hunker" or 
"hard shell" (to apply the cant term of the day) and 
could not reconcile the "softs" or "barnburners" who 
inclined to anti-slavery views and the leadership of 
Silas Wright. Wright's death this year, after the fail- 
ure to re-elect him governor, was a serious blow to 
Democrats of the latter class, and a calamity to all citi- 
zens, irrespective of party, who had resolved that a 
barrier must be opposed to the further usurpations 
of slavery. Polk's administration, which owed much 
to this man, had rendered him little; aware that 
his steadfast soul disapproved of its policy, and 
that the anti-slavery element of the country turned 



334 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

to him for next President. "The Wilmot Proviso," 
wrote Horace Greeley in an obituary sketch, "owes 
more to Silas Wright than to any other man ; he was 
the soul and centre of the influence that held so many 
of his party steadfast through the trials of last winter." 



This was one of those epochs of popular revulsion 
when a high surge seems to sweep away from our Rep- 
resentatives' chamber the familiar set. Of 
December. 22 & members in the present House, less than 
ioo had served in the one preceding, and the 
proportion of new members was very great ; while from 
the West came several strangers of striking figure and 
physiognomy, all in the prime of early manhood. 

One of these last was Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, 
a Whig whom journalists likened to a lonely sycamore 
among the forest Democracy of his State. By a singu- 
lar coincidence, two men, the antipodes of one another, 
and destined to a world-wide renown, entered this win- 
ter the opposite portals of the Capitol: both uncon- 
scious, no doubt, of the collision time had in store for 
them, and, for the present conjunction, hardly passing 
the salute of acquaintance. These two men were Lin- 
coln and Jefferson Davis, born in the same slave State, 
the one of poor-white pedigree, the latter of patrician, 
and taken in tender years to opposite points of the com- 
pass. Lincoln had educated himself in the bitter school 
of privation, while Davis's training was a military one 
at the cost of the general government. 

Two men more different in traits and physiognomy 
at the present time it would be hard to discover. Davis, 
of wiry and compact frame and medium height, com- 
bined the easy manners of a Southern gentleman whose 



LINCOLN AND DAVIS 335 

position was assured with the firm and erect carriage of 
a soldier, conscious of the distinction he had won in the 
late war, by individual gallantry and his marriage con- 
nection with General Taylor. Davis had served lately in 
the House, but, resigning his seat to lead a Mississippi 
regiment, he came back as a Senator to fill a vacancy, 
under the temporary appointment of the Governor, and 
was confirmed by the legislature of his State. His cast 
of mind was rigid and strongly Southern ; cotton formed 
the staple of his political economy, and Calhoun was 
his ideal of a statesman. His heart was consecrated to 
expanding the area for slave States, and for that patri- 
archal system of labor as to whose eternal fitness he felt 
no doubt whatever. He was precocious in hardening into 
that tenacious, inflexible attachment to precepts, which 
in these waxen days of Northern sensibility won so 
many concessions for the sake of national harmony. As 
an instance of rigidity worthy a disciple of the South 
Carolinian, Davis had just declined a commission from 
the President, as brigadier-general of volunteers, on 
the ground that only a State could confer such a title ; 
and the first impression he made this winter in Sena- 
torial debate was as a martinet who praised regular 
troops above volunteers as soldiers, in words that inti- 
mated quite offensively that "the lower grades of men" 
were the better kind for such as himself to handle. 

What, if he ever encountered him, this haughty scion 
of the Democracy thought of that gaunt, awkward, ill- 
dressed Whig of the other House, who was easy-hu- 
mored and companionable, but shy of drawing-room 
receptions, we have no means of knowing. Had not 
Abraham Lincoln been pulled out of slave soil while his 
roots were tender he would have died unknown. But 
poverty in a free territory helped make a man of him. 



336 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

This Congress saw the first and last of him in legis- 
lative life, however, for he declined to run another 
term, and his district reverted to the Democrats. Sin- 
gular and striking in personal appearance, as those who 
met him in these years observed — not supposing that 
observation of much consequence — a kind but shrewd 
sagacity and droll humor were his salient traits. Above 
all, he imaged to the mind a steadfast honesty of pur- 
pose, and genuineness. In a single year he was pro- 
nounced a universal favorite among men who could 
appreciate whatever was rare, racy, and unique, and 
take a rough diamond upon its own intrinsic worth. 
Bad taste blurred the dignity of his efforts as a debater 
during this brief national episode, as when one enters 
the fashionable circle in a homespun suit. He showed 
himself clear-headed, a master of resources, nor did he 
fear to measure himself against statesmen of renown; 
but the flavor of the stump and village grocery de- 
tracted from one who trained with the party of gen- 
tility. In one speech of this session he dissected the 
President's partisan statement of the causes of the 
Mexican War, and, after a favorite process of logical 
reasoning, convicted Polk out of his own mouth. But 
in another he flung dignity to the winds, and in a sort 
of colloquial harangue on presidential candidates, he 
amused the House with humorous stories of hogs and 
oxen, and with bucolic illustrations, pointed and racy, 
but by no means elegant. Lincoln's quaint originality, 
in short, impressed his fellow-members more than the 
fibre of his statesmanship, which was fair and cau- 
tious ; and had he been returned to another Congress it 
is possible he might have suffered, on becoming better 
known, that popular hindrance to high honors which 
more than one able American has lamented in his own 



DEATH OF ADAMS 337 

instance, by gaining the reputation of being comical. 
But Lincoln showed himself, even at this homelier stage 
of advancement, a logician of no mean power, whose 
conveyance of his ideas could be clear and picturesque, 
and as a political counsellor he was sage and practical. 



A glory gilds the historical page for a moment. 
John Ouincy Adams, at fourscore years, was a partic- 
ipant still in the debates of the House, 
though less actively than before, and rarely 1848. 
was he absent from his seat. As senior 
member he administered the oath to Speaker Winthrop, 
his colleague, when the House organized. The Presi- 
dent's January message, which refused information to 
the House concerning the objects of the war and the 
instructions given for procuring a peace, brought the 
old man on his feet with a speech to which the whole 
hall listened, delivered with his earlier fire, but in a 
failing voice. Adams in these days won the respect of 
all parties and all sections by his consummate sturdi- 
ness of character. A reception which he gave that same 
month, where Clay was present, brought a more eager 
throng for salutations than at the White House. 
Never since the ex-President entered the House had 
the political tone of his native State been so nearly in 
accord with his own. Punctually on the 21st of Feb- 
ruary did Adams take his seat, as well to all appear- 
ances as usual. Rumors of peace and of the treaty 
which had just arrived stirred the air of the Capitol. 
The House was occupied upon a batch of trivial resolu- 
tions, and about one o'clock Speaker Winthrop had 
risen to put a question to vote, when a sudden cry was 
heard, "Mr. Adams is dying!" The venerable states- 



338 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

man was falling over the left arm of his chair while his 
right arm reached out to grasp his desk for support. 
One member caught him in his arms, while others 
rushed from all parts of the hall to tender assistance. 
The House adjourned at once, and its dying member, 
helpless but hardly insensible, was borne upon a sofa 
into the rotunda, where he was quickly surrounded by 
members of both Houses, and strangers, the Senate by 
this time having also adjourned in great agitation. 
Upon medical advice the sofa was borne to the entrance 
door of the east portico, where the air was found too 
chilly, and then to the Speaker's room, whence the 
crowd was excluded. While lying here Adams par- 
tially recovered his speech and said in faltering accents : 
"This is the last of earth" — quickly adding the final 
words, "I am content." Through the day he lingered, 
all unconscious ; through the next also, a national holi- 
day, whose festivities prearranged were suspended in 
consequence; and in the early eve of the 23d, still in 
the Speaker's room, and close by the familiar post of 
duty, the great commoner breathed his last. 

It was a remarkable death, worthy of a remarkable 
man, and quite resembling that of America's friend in 
revolutionary times, the Earl of Chatham. Adams's 
example thrilled his fellow-countrymen at last as though 
a final tableau of the heroic age had been taken with 
him. It was false to imagine that slaveholders honored 
most deeply in their hearts Northerners who were the 
most pliable to their wishes. Bitter, taunting, exas- 
perating as this spokesman of a pilgrim constituency 
had so often been, they vied with orators of Adams's 
own section and vicinity in commemorating the varied 
talents, the vast learning and experience, the accu- 
mulated public honors, the spotless private character 



POLK'S CHARACTER 339 

and religious faith, and above all, the admirable cour- 
age and consistency which marked this career of more 
than fifty years, whose conspicuous merit was to make 
the humbler post of fame shine brighter than the 
highest. 

Our government was at peace with all nations when 
Polk vacated the Presidency. In the midst of more mo- 
mentous employments, the negotiation of treaties ad- 
vantageous to American commerce had not been 
overlooked by him. The example of treating for- 
eign countries liberally in our own ports elicited 
corresponding favors which argumentative dip- 
lomacy would have sought in vain. War and the 
rumors of war had now swept by; our administra- 
tion which had come in as a lion went out as a lamb. 
The crown jewels which Polk's strong policy be- 
queathed to his country were of priceless worth — Ore- 
gon, and all that splendid spoliation of Mexico, whose 
chief of hidden treasures was California. 

Polk's remarkable success as a negotiator and ad- 
ministrator in affairs was due less to skilful handling 
than to silence and secrecy. Reticence of purpose 
helped both to conceal a failure and to win from success 
an admiration unexpected. In methods he was pushing 
and persistent, aiming straight at his mark, but at the 
same time adroit and baffling, not to say deceitful, over 
the plans he most cherished. The Mexican people had 
good cause to reproach him with falsehood, while Dix 
and Wilmot are among those, once Polk's party friends, 
who have raised their own issues of veracity. Polk 
assuredly did not scruple to dissimulate as to his real 
intentions, and his repeated misstatements, official and 
unofficial, are scarcely palliated by that peculiar tern- 



34o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

perament which made it impossible for him, even when 
exalted to the highest pinnacle of responsibility, to state 
a public question as though it had two sides to it. Even 
at the last moment and just as he was about to retire 
from public life, a peremptory call of the House com- 
pelled him to confess that he had caused the treaty of 
peace with Mexico to be ratified with a secret protocol, 
of which our Senate had never been apprised — a pro- 
tocol which neutralized the effect of amendments our 
Senate had made to the original treaty. 



The strong traits of Polk's administration have al- 
ready been outlined. It was unquestionably an admin- 
istration of strong achievements; and all doubts 
may be dismissed concerning the efficiency of the 
man who was at the head of it. Bancroft's testi- 
mony as a cabinet officer is confirmed by that of 
Buchanan, who, spontaneously and in private, held 
Polk up in later years as a model President in 
various respects; as one who maintained influence 
among his counsellors by his great reticence, his 
disposition to keep himself uncommitted on important 
points of policy until the time should arrive, and his 
determination not to have the chieftains of embittered 
factions with rival ambitions about him, but to keep 
all working steadily for the glory and success of his 
administration. He ascribed Polk's success in public 
measures, more than anything else, to his regard for 
the vital principle of official unity in action. And this 
premier has recalled another trait in Polk's manage- 
ment of affairs which he of all advisers was the proper 
one to discern; all important questions with foreign 
nations were drawn to himself as far as possible, so 



POLK'S CHARACTER 341 



that they should be settled at our capital and under his 
immediate supervision. Though Mexico was neces- 
sarily an exception to such a course of dealing, it was 
characteristic of a negotiator like this to send to the 
seat of war a clerk of the Secretary of State with a 
treaty already drafted under his personal direction as 
the basis of a settlement. Polk, in fine, had limitations 
as a statesman, and greater ones as a political manager ; 
but experience had given him confidence in affairs. He 
had never shirked hard work, and in his own way he 
faithfully served the people. He was not fastidious; 
he was not thoughtful of the rights of other peoples, 
other races, other political parties, than his own. He 
saw what he wanted, and he toiled with unwearied zeal 
to fetch it. His motto for Americans and white men 
was to keep what they had and catch what they could ; 
and upon that theory of public achievement he brought 
things to pass. Ideality and the highest sense of honor 
were wanting to such a policy; and while our people 
accepted his benefits they had too much good feeling to 
commend his craft or reward him with their gratitude. 
The heavy burden of official cares and that heavier 
burden of popular obloquy which this lesser son of Ten- 
nessee sustained in silence were more than his health 
could well endure in the later prime of a life which had 
been loaded down with public activities. Polk had no 
humorous perception, no elasticity of spirits. His wife, 
an exemplary woman, was too devout for social levities, 
and their marriage was childless. That old and sor- 
rowful look which many former acquaintances com- 
mented upon when he journeyed North was visible at 
Adams's funeral and on the few other occasions of this 
latest winter when the President appeared in public. 
His silvery hair, combed to the back of his head, gave 



342 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

to a face of serious demeanor an almost venerable look. 
After the inauguration of his successor on the 5th of 
March, he made a short tour southward in company 
with ex-Secretary Walker, and in due time reached 
Nashville and his home. His serious illness there was 

announced shortly after, and next his death. 
juni 9 ; 5 . N° public obsequies were arranged in his 

honor. The opposition press, which had ex- 
ecrated him as he left the capital, spoke more gently of 
him in his secluded grave — of the quiet, unostenta- 
tious life he had lived ; of his strictness and devoutness 
as a member of the Presbyterian Church ; of his free- 
dom from the Southern vice of duelling, and from dis- 
sipation in all its forms ; of his irreproachable character 
in private, and finally, as a public man, of his long and 
distinguished services to the country. After this brief- 
spaced decent tribute Polk's name was seldom publicly 
mentioned. Over the fruits, sweet and bitter, which 
his administration had cast so abundantly into the lap 
of the people, there sprang up very soon sectional 
quarrel and contention, but the gatherer of those fruits 
was very soon forgotten. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

ADMINISTRATION OF ZACHARY TAYLOR. 
Period of Thirty-first Congress. March 4, 1849-July 9, 1850. 

THE Deity that overrules all things punishes 
the sin of covetousness, not necessarily by 
withholding or depriving of the coveted ob- 
ject, but by planting in the wrongful acquisition a 
penalty. The men or the people who yield to inordinate 
desires are permitted to be further corrupted by gaining 
what they strive for. Texas, New Mexico, California, 
all that vast sweep of territory which we had wrested 
from Mexico by fraud or conquest, was ours irrev- 
ocably, and perhaps forever. We peopled that glori- 
ous area with our own inhabitants; we gave it the 
blessing of a better civilization; under our influence 
and protection the wilderness blossomed. Time, in 
fine, has welded that whole annexation so firmly and 
indissolubly with the great American Union, that the 
earlier misrule of Mexico is almost forgotten. In one 
sense it was better for society that the acquisition was 
made. The scorching illustrations, drawn in Corwin's 
famous speech from Napoleon and modern Europe, 
have found here no parallel; in American history no 
infatuated warrior has bent the Republic to his personal 
ambition ; our boundaries have not expanded like those 
of France to shrink back once more to their original 
limits. Yet divine retribution followed as quickly as 



344 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

that speech predicted, and the delusion of "manifest 
destiny" brought its appropriate punishment. That 
the iniquitous war with Mexico drove from public con- 
fidence the politicians and the political set by whom it 
was provoked, our last chapter has shown. Triumph- 
ant success to our arms did not turn the torrent of 
popular odium which the prosecution of such a war 
excited. That, to be sure, was temporary, and while 
the first sense of guilty wrong lasted after the secret 
motives of the war had been fully revealed. A wider 
retribution followed, as the scroll of divine requital 
slowly unrolled. In less than five years North and 
South were nearly in civil conflict to settle the social 
status of these new territories ; in five years more the 
rivalry, still further strengthened, was transferred to 
other territory and other new projects for slave con- 
quest; another five years saw civil disruption and a 
civil war such as the world had never witnessed; and 
before twenty years had elapsed slavery and slave con- 
federacy had melted alike in the fervent heat of a 
strife which began in this unhallowed attempt to wrest 
the domains of a weaker republic for the spread and 
perpetuation of slave institutions in the stronger. Free- 
dom was the final result and the only one consonant 
with eternal justice; but that goal was not reached 
without terrible cost and sacrifice to both North and 
South, for men of each section had erred exceedingly. 
But truly this new acquisition was a noble one, could 
we but have gained honorably that rich and picturesque 
domain. With Texas, California, Utah, and New 
Mexico, that broad zone was now complete which 
girdled the continent from ocean to ocean. This proud 
and independent republic, within sixty years of that 
compact existence which began with the Mississippi for 



GOLD IN CALIFORNIA 345 

a last border, had crossed that broad river and stretched 
its empire to the remote and undefined peaks of the 
Rocky Mountain chain, and at length, sweeping beyond 
that mountain barrier, stretched in its last and fullest 
expansion to the Pacific. The two great seas of the 
world now washed the one and the other shore ; and a 
great orator's imagery recalled the artist's last finish 
to the shield of Achilles, when he poured round the 
waves of living silver which "beat the buckler's verge 
and bound the whole." 



There were signs and portents in these days which 
augurs of the old Roman world would have collated. 
Zachary Taylor took the oath of ofhce under 
a gloomy sky, while a raw wind blew from i8 49 . 
the east and intermittent snowflakes were 
falling. Bloody war, with Hungary's vain struggle 
for independence, agitated eastern Europe. Riot and 
incendiary fire attended Tory outbreaks over the Cana- 
dian line, in the course of which the buildings of a pro- 
vincial parliament were burned. Late in the spring, 
within our national borders a great crevasse and river 
flood made much distress about New Orleans city and 
the lower Mississippi; and soon afterwards from that 
same unwholesome region stalked forth the black 
plague of cholera to ravage the Union far and wide in 
course of the summer, and reap its victims in all direc- 
tions so remorselessly that a day of national fast and 
prayer was proclaimed to avert so terrible a scourge. 

But startling beyond all other portents was that pio- 
neer band moving westward through the Rocky wil- 
derness, upon whose flank hovered that same cholera 
pestilence, breathing its rotten breath, but powerless to 



346 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

pursue far ; and those ocean Argonauts, besides, whose 
faces were set to the same remote land of the golden 
fleece. For gold was the new and startling discovery 
in California. The North did not alone watch this 
portent. Southerners, less identified with the move- 
ment, slaveholders of the Gulf, observed it with undis- 
guised dread and dismay. And when presently it was 
revealed that a new free State was forming which would 
cover the best breadth of that whole Pacific slope, con- 
quered most of all by Southern arms in the interest of 
Southern expansion, Southern men realized that Nature 
had turned the tables upon them — that the fruits of our 
Mexican conquest were ripening for those who opposed 
rather than for those who incited it. To free Cali- 
fornia, what was slavery's sure counterpoise? The old 
equilibrium of sections was destroyed; freedom over- 
balanced the scales of national influence; and at no 
distant day the system which they had pressed to ex- 
tend would be at the mercy of a numerical majority 
whose inner wish was to eradicate it. True, there 
remained the bulwark of the constitution to resist en- 
croachments upon the institution in States where it 
already existed. But to remain local and sectional, and 
not to propagate and justify their own peculiar heritage, 
against the world's philanthropy, was the very root of 
bitterness to this haughty and high-strung race of pro- 
prietors, who hardly believed that freedom, once gaining 
the upper hand, would respect the restraints of the 
constitution. "For the first time in the history of our 
country/' writes a Southern governor impetuously, 
"the North is dominant in the federal government." 

It was startling to see Southern Whigs of the Gulf 
States join in that jealous hue and cry — men like Alex- 
ander H. Stephens, who but a few weeks since had 



A NEW FREE STATE 347 

resisted Calhoun's artful efforts to unite all the slave- 
holders of Congress in a bold menace of disunion; or 
like Toombs, who had confessed so confidentially that 
California could never be a slave country, and that in 
organizing the territories Southerners had only the 
point of honor to serve. Such men feared, perhaps, 
that the home sentiment would ebb away from them if 
they pleaded still for loyalty. The honor of a gentle- 
man had but one code — to maintain one's point, not to 
discuss its righteousness. Slavery was a training- 
school of rebellious temper, of impatience to force ex- 
tremities. 

The Union will soon dissolve (thus argued the 
Southern Whig) ; we have ultimately to submit or 
fight; the anti-slavery feeling and the feeling of dis- 
memberment may be abated, but it will return with 
increased force. "It is the idea of the age, the mono- 
mania of the century in which we live." * And slave- 
holders who, like Stephens, saw in political dissolution 
a resistless fate, apprehended that when the Congres- 
sional majority in House and Senate was once footed 
up against the South, the North would harass, annoy, 
and oppress. 



The third great speech of March, 1850, was by 
Seward. It upheld the President's course, and pleaded 
for the admission of California under her 
free State constitution, without extraneous 1850. 
conditions. The young Senator from New 
York was already looked upon as the Mordecai in the 
king's gate; and Southern men blamed the President, 
one of themselves, for being under such influence. To 
♦Johnston's A. H. Stephens, c. 24. 



348 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 



this new champion of the forum listened all of the tri- 
umvirate, Clay, Webster and Calhoun, gazing silently 
while he spoke of things strange to them. He seemed 
really younger than he was; a man slightly built and 
agile, clad in plain black; his reddish hair turning 
brown, but not yet mingled with gray; his compact 
head and curving features marked strongest in the pro- 
file. Trying, indeed, must it have been for Seward, on 
his first national occasion, to face potentates so famous, 
and yet so distrustful of him. When he first arose he 
spoke with hesitation, as though his heart failed him, 
and he seemed commonplace by comparison; but the 
substance of his speech was striking, and his plain 
features soon lighted up, until the warmth of his elo- 
quence stirred the whole chamber. He urged broad 
moral principle, as one who thought the old equilibrium 
of the sections should never be restored. He condemned 
all political compromises which involved matters of the 
conscience; and confidently presaged the power of the 
American people to maintain their national integrity 
under whatever menace of danger. This was the 
speech, long commented upon, which announced the 
"higher law" doctrine — that higher law to which all 
human legislation should conform. 

Of all these famous Senatorial speeches, Seward's 
was by far the most profound, and worthiest of being 
read in a calmer age. It was full of thought and 
humanity, and lighted up with prophetic insight. But 
Calhoun, most of the Olympian trio, was galled by it. 
The dying statesman had glided in like a spectre on the 
day that Webster spoke, and taken part in a brief col- 
loquy at the close of its magnificent peroration. More 
than once did he return, and when Seward spoke he sat 
riveted, with glassy eyeballs fixed intently upon him. 



THE SENATE PLAN 349 

And muttering what sounded like a malediction, he 
said to friends about him that one with such ideas of 
"higher law" was not the kind of man to associate 
with; and in that repelling mood, so fame reports, he 
left the accustomed chamber never to return. Calhoun 
died on the last day of March, a confirmed disunionist. 
And on his dying bed he told Toombs that he must 
leave to younger men the task of carrying out his 
plans.* 

Had Webster and Clay — or had either one of them — 
stood by their President, history might have vindicated 
a policy against which rebellion had no just cause for 
appeal. Sooner or later California's admission as a 
free State must have been granted if she was to remain 
a national prize at all, and in all other respects — except 
the boundary issue with Texas — this territorial ques- 
tion might have been adjourned for twenty years. 
Without positive action at all by Congress the respon- 
sibility rested upon Presidential shoulders, and there 
the people would have trusted it. But the Senatorial 
drift was to Clay's plan of compromise. 



Zachary Taylor was the first of American Presidents 
whose choice rested solely upon a military reputation 
disconnected altogether from civil pursuits. And 
the only errors of his administration — which, after 
all, were unimportant — should be ascribed to his 
inexperience in public affairs and his unacquaint- 
ance with public men; time would have corrected 
them had he lived to round out his term. His 

* 1 Coleman's Crittenden, 363. "He was firmly and I believe 
honestly persuaded," wrote a friend soon after the funeral, "that 
the Union ought to be dissolved." lb. 



350 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

cabinet was not all it should have been, and while he 
was on the point of changing it death intervened, and 
the regret remains that he had not changed it before. 
In the higher aims of domestic, as well as foreign 
policy, he showed the best qualities of an administrator ; 
being wise, temperate, sincere, honest as the day, more 
than loyal to the Union, because he loved it and would 
have laid down his life in its defence. He was simple 
in habits, frank in manners, with a genuineness which 
impressed all who came in contact with him, and a 
firmness that shunned no danger. Though not by 
genius or habit a statesman, he saw more clearly the 
bold headlands of national policy through the mists 
that were gathering, than the wisest and world-re- 
nowned of our statesmen who scarcely condescended 
to him and thought their vision better. Nor did it take 
him many months to discern that what the country 
wished and needed was not pacification nor the plau- 
sible bargain of principles, but loyal acquiescence in 
nature and the right. A slaveholder himself, he yet 
felt that slavery ought not to extend farther. A 
soldier of the Union, he stood ready to lead the Union 
forces in his own person if his own section rebelled, 
and to pour out his blood in defence of the flag. 

Personal example is, after all, the greatest force 
which can elevate or degrade a government; and the 
best of personal examples is that of honest patriotism 
striving to be right. Taylor, while he lived, inspired 
firmness for freedom's cause, and he was the one man 
before whom the false idealists of a slave confederacy 
quailed with fear. Naturally, then, he endeared him- 
self to the common people, and had he lived there is 
little doubt that he would have carried the policy he 
had at heart. It was the most practical; it depended 



DEATH OF TAYLOR 351 

the least upon assertion by Congress. But the key of 
the territorial situation was lost with the warrior who 
grasped it. The saying had long been current, "Gen- 
eral Taylor never surrenders;" and his first surrender 
was to death. His last appearance in life was fitly on 
the anniversary of his country's independence. His 
last official act was to proclaim a new compact with 
Great Britain. That grim conqueror, who had never 
checked his military renown, forbade him the proof of 
statesmanship, and his monument must remain an un- 
finished shaft. 



CHAPTER XX. 

ADMINISTRATION OF MILLARD FILLMORE. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-first Congress. July 9, 1850-March 3, 
1851. — § II. Period of Thirty-second Congress. March 4, 
1851-March 3, i853- 

ROLL back the inevitable tide for ten years and 
we may estimate the effect of Taylor's un- 
timely death upon American politics. The 
man was gone on whom freedom's cause depended; 
there was no leader of the people left but Congress, and 
Congress was not likely to resist long its orators. And 
now for a space the marble-propped cham- 
1850. ber vibrates with funeral eloquence — with 
silvery eulogies, breathing all kindness, 
as the virtues of the dead are recounted, yet all the 
while hinting delicately that the orator himself would 
have made the better President for times so tur- 
bulent. "There were circumstances in his death," 
said Webster, mysteriously, in deep and solemn 
tones, "so favorable for his own fame and char- 
acter, so gratifying to all to whom he was most 
dear, that he may be said to have died fortunately." 
Clay, later, paid his tribute to the departed as "an 
honest man and a brave man ;" but while praising him 
for his conduct of foreign affairs, he spoke with reserve 
upon his domestic administration. 

A second time had the Whigs chosen a President, to 



NEW WHIG MISFORTUNE 353 

be baffled by the all-destroyer. But no apostate suc- 
cession was to be their present misfortune. Millard 
Fillmore was a genuine Whig as well as a wise, upright, 
and incorruptible statesman. His experience with 
public affairs, and his knowledge of public men, were 
far more extensive than Taylor had brought to the 
chief magistracy. He loved the Union and was de- 
voted to its welfare. And besides all this, his inner 
convictions were anti-slavery ; he had been nursed and 
brought up in that quarter of an agitating State where 
agitation rocked hardest. For all this, Fillmore's train- 
ing, his temperament, was that of a civilian, not bold, 
but prudent. His disposition was conservative; he 
could not create; he was one who at all times would 
rather make terms than face an enemy. And more than 
this he appreciated the immense difference in popular 
strength between an elected President and an acci- 
dental one — between an Executive who could face 
slaveholders as one of their own class, and an Executive 
against whom slavery would fork its tongue as an in- 
truder. Men who dared not more than to threaten the 
one, would have opposed, perhaps impeached, thwarted 
in every way, the other. Fillmore, then, was easily 
swayed by Webster, Clay, and all the temporizing in- 
fluences of the Whig party. Nor should we fail to 
recall Fillmore's long strife with Seward for predomi- 
nance in their common State and neighborhood. With 
his lurking jealousy of the rival who had diverted a 
share of local patronage and outstripped him so quickly 
in favor at the White House, there is little doubt that 
during the splendid debate to which he was a silent 
listener, the man who presided over the Senate had 
been drifting, almost unconsciously, into the current of 
time-serving truce. So true is it that under our system 



354 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

the Vice-President inclines to become an attractor of 
counter-influences within the party. 



The North had humiliations and struggles of its own 
with reference to this new and immutable compact of 
Congress. Nor took it long to discern that the new 
fugitive slave act, which Southern Unionists seemed to 
think the golden link of loyalty, was, from the opposite 
standpoint, the most damnable in the chain. It was not, 
perhaps, the weakest; for that, in more remote con- 
sequences, was the new principle now grafted upon the 
territories, whereby Congress, not content to omit 
quietly the Wilmot Proviso, expressly abnegated its 
rights of guardianship and left freedom and slavery 
to antagonize to the end. The mischief of that new 
principle was not apparent for years, but that of the 
fugitive slave act was palpable at once. 

It is but just to our slaveholding brethren to admit 
that they seldom, if ever, invoked the machinery of this 
obnoxious law for fraudulent enslavement. Collision 
came rather at the point where free soil would have 
shielded the long resident as a free citizen, despite some 
claim of former bondage. The fugitive slave act to all 
but slave States was detestable, and it forced the general 
government to use a giant's strength like a giant. The 
task of quenching agitation on the slavery question was 
formidable enough for any administration; but to 
quench it while pouring oil on the flames was a task 
herculean. Yet Fillmore and his cabinet did not 
shrink from it. In the division of Northern Whigs 
which now ensued, radicals found themselves coalescing 
more closely. Large public meetings called in favor of 
Union, and the "peace measures," at Boston, New 



COMPROMISE OF 1850 355 

York, Philadelphia, Nashville, Cincinnati, and else- 
where, widened the breach irrevocably. Notable citi- 
zens took the lead in reconciling the North to the new 
compact — men like Rufus Choate, John Sergeant, and 
Richard Rush. Old line Whigs and Democrats for the 
time approached one another; conservatives joined 
hands to put down the radicals. Letters from Webster, 
Clay, Cass, and Woodbury were read promiscuously 
at such gatherings ; and men of historical lineage were 
sought out to preside, from Bunker Hill to the Her- 
mitage. No union possible without forbearance — this 
was the burden of their appeal. Crittenden, the Attor- 
ney-General, prepared an opinion that the fugitive 
slave act was constitutional. Webster contended stren- 
uously that, though not perfect, nor such as he would 
have framed, it was a law of the land and ought not 
even to be amended. "No man/' he wrote to one of 
these gatherings, with a fling at Seward, "is at liberty 
to set up, or to affect to set up, his own conscience as 
above the law." 



The sober second thought of the people at length sus- 
tained President Fillmore in his purpose to uphold the 
peace settlement of 1850 as a final and com- 
prehensive one. His lack of personal pre- 1852. 
tence, his clear and emphatic expression, gave 
force to his approval of the legislative policy, obnoxious 
though the latter might be to a large minority of both 
sections. Republics incline to temporize with prob- 
lems which are found difficult to manage, and tempor- 
izing is the essence of all government which is carried 
on by popular assemblies. Few turned back the page 
far enough to read the fate of Clay's tariff compromise 



356 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

of 1833, so prone are American citizens to treat the 
present on its detached merits. Few measured the 
danger of granting half that a State demands upon its 
open threat of disloyalty. Few calculated the probable 
duration of a settlement based upon the idea that the 
Union had ceased to expand, and that sectional pride 
would not resist the edicts of nature nor stretch the 
national boundaries. This fact, at least, was positive : 
that the whole course of events was soon reac- 
tionary under the impulse of the new compact. The 
country grew sick of the slavery question and wished 
agitators at the devil. Good men, North and South, 
made the constitution their fetich more than ever, and, 
like a prudent husband who is yoked with an irritable 
spouse, they forced themselves to love for the sake of 
quiet. 



In view of their practical concurrence, after much 
tribulation, upon the vexed problem of the day — and 
since both acquiesced in the sectional pacification of 
1850, though the National Whigs were, in sentiment, 
hopelessly divided by it — wherein, after all, consisted 
now the fundamental difference between Whig and 
Democrat? What issue was there left between these 
parties upon which to conduct the present campaign? 
Little, we may rest assured. The intelligence and dis- 
criminating justice of the American people were flat- 
tered by both platforms ; the limited scope, too, of the 
general government, and the reserved rights of 
States. But while the Whigs called still for encour- 
agement under the tariff to American industry, for the 
liberal improvement of rivers and harbors, Democrats 
rebuked the fostering of one branch of industry to the 



DEMOCRATIC POLICY 357 

detriment of another, and the raising of more revenue 
than the necessities of the government required. 
Nearly, then, as national parties seemed to approach 
one another, and devoted as both might be deemed to 
the idea that the people were the fountain of sovereign 
power, there appeared this radical diversity of senti- 
ment concerning the appropriate sphere of government, 
that the Whigs looked rather to a superintending and 
beneficent authority, which should alleviate burdens 
and multiply the blessings of general intercourse, while 
Democrats nourished a general distrust and jealousy 
of all guiding authority, all patronage, and held that 
national government the best which governed the least. 
But this "let alone" had come to be a peculiarly 
Southern phase of national politics; it harmonized with 
the bald and slothful development of these staple-rais- 
ing States, and tended above all things to place State 
rights foremost. The slave oligarchy, compact and 
fearless, gained in these years the upper hand in the 
Democratic party, by giving the chief honors and 
patronage to Northern men who could carry the popu- 
lous States, while shaping the national policy to its own 
ends. 



The Whig cause was overcast and funereal from the 
start. In scarce a week from the close of their dis- 
cordant convention, died Henry Clay, the 
founder and inspiration of that great party, ^1%. 
prince of the Senate (to use a title of the 
Augustan age), and beyond whatever faults of char- 
acter, a plastic moulder of national policy, an orator 
rich and ready, and a sympathetic leader of intelligent 
men, such as the world has rarely seen. The funeral 



358 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

escort which bore home his remains from the capital 
city where his last sunshine lingered made the opening 
procession of this Whig canvass; while a darker de- 
parture marked its close — the death of that other leader 
in whom the party originated. 

Daniel Webster had been in failing health, oppressed 
with years and the cares of office, and buoyed up 
chiefly by the hope of attaining the reward of his long- 
cherished ambition. His defeat at the Whig conven- 
tion — a last defeat as he too well knew — was more than 
his proud spirit could bear ; moreover, its circumstances, 
doubly mortifying from the defection of those he had 
served not less than of those he had deserted. He had 
bargained away his moral conviction for the sake of 
national harmony; had parted precious and life-long 
friendships for the sake of pacifying the slave-masters ; 
and now these turned their backs upon him after using 
him for their own ends. They preferred the common- 
place Fillmore, over whose administration he had 
poured his full resplendence. Clay, of all allies, had 
passed his dying word for that preference; Critten- 
den's cabinet influence had gone in the same direction ; 
Fillmore, not magnanimous enough to stand aside, had 
consented. Webster felt that he had dragooned New 
England in vain. He was stunned, bewildered, unable 
to carry on his public tasks at the usual place or with 
the customary composure. To some of the Southern 
delegates returning home he betrayed the poignancy 
of his chagrin over their defection. He sought the 
refuge of his lonely home near the resounding surf, 
there to lay himself down to die, with only nature and 
unchanging personal friends for his company. Some 
of these last would have put him before the people as 
an independent candidate. In the anger of his own 



DOWNFALL OF THE WHIGS 359 

grief he spurned Scott more disloyally than he had 
done Taylor; for he privately advised his friends to 
vote for Franklin Pierce. He seemed willing that the 
Whig party should be cast into the same, grave with his 
disappointed hopes. And thus dismissing the world 
with its vain strifes, Webster breathed his 
last while the political battle raged fiercely in October 23. 
the distance; and the life of our most intel- 
lectual statesman, the man of heaviest brain and most 
kingly aspect, ebbed out with the neighboring tide. 
Nothing that he uttered in his last hours indicates that 
what he had done for fraternal peace, that the success 
of those compromise measures which at length seemed 
positive, brought him consoling thoughts, serene tran- 
quillity at the last. Whether he closed his eyes in the 
full conviction that he had done right only eternity can 
reveal. 

Webster died the victim of personal disappointment. 
He still lives in American memory, and deserves to 
live, as statesman, orator, and exemplar of the national 
sentiment, as champion of the Union against all dis- 
loyal heresy. Yet his image and memory are likely to 
endure in generations to come, as the image and 
memory of one who, with all his colossal endowments, 
was very human. Nature was always stronger with 
him than the arts of discipline ; and this Achilles of our 
civil life, dipped early into the Styx of national poli- 
tics, had yet his vulnerable part. 

These deaths of illustrious leaders — and particularly 
the latter and less expected one — east a pall over the 
Whig canvass, presaging disastrous defeat. Under 
the greatest American soldier of the age, albeit a sad 
miscalculator in politics, the Whig party — or that 
remnant which remained faithful to regular nominees 



360 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

— marched to a Waterloo defeat. Franklin Pierce, the 
fainting hero, overwhelmed the proud conqueror of the 
Montezumas. The first Tuesday's sun of November 
went down upon a shattered and discomfited 
' national party never more to rally, but des- 
tined to disperse in local fragments, and then melt into 
the yeasty waves as completely as Federalism before it. 
Whiggery, it is true, had been less patrician, less dis- 
trustful of the people than Federalism ; but the Federal- 
ists in their day accomplished much for history that 
was permanent, while th~ Whigs — crushed under the 
incessant weight of unparalleled misfortunes — left 
nothing. The drift of American politics, in spite of the 
best navigators, had been to sectional strife; and for 
guidance through such dangers, the Whigs had proved 
too humane to steer in the one direction and too faint- 
hearted to take the other. The party fell by dissension 
and by its terrible propensity to misfortunes; and its 
epitaph must be that it loved the Union as it was and 
sought sincerely to preserve it. 



Millard Fillmore left supreme office with this wide- 
ranged Union flourishing and to all appearances tran- 
quil. At home, as he could fairly claim, 
Americans enjoyed an amount of happiness, March. 
public and private, such as probably had 
never fallen to the lot of another people — of happiness, 
in which great multitudes, unlike all precedents from 
the Old World, felt the right to participate. In closing 
his Presidential term, he claimed to have done no more 
than to discharge its duties to the best of his humble 
abilities and with a single eye to the public good. It 
would be invidious to deny to one called so suddenly 



FILLMORE'S CHARACTER 361 

and so unexpectedly to terrible responsibilities so 
modest a meed of public gratitude. Congress, though 
not in political sympathy with him, rendered perfunc- 
tory homage. In official utterances he had thrice 
blessed already the compromise of 1850 as the final 
reconcilement of slavery and freedom. Benedictions 
flowed down this last of ruling Whigs, like the oil on 
Aaron's beard and skirts, as he stepped back to the 
grade of private citizen. In the hour of parting saluta- 
tion, the members of his cabinet, dignified and able 
men, certified in writing to his uniform courtesy, and 
their high appreciation of his services and personal 
character. Could bland appreciation of this kind fix 
Fillmore's seat among the permanent benefactors of 
mankind? His administration had been instrumental 
to the allied purposes of that noble pair, Clay and 
Webster, who, in their lives, made Presidents, though 
they were none. He himself originated in office noth- 
ing that was accomplished, and accomplished nothing 
but what others originated. Fillmore's personal fol- 
lowers were not among the boldest, the soundest, the 
clearest sighted of the free States, but rather among 
the timid and obsequious. Such friends he preferred 
in the patronage, and was chieftain of the "silver 
grays." This handsome personage, whose deportment 
was excellent and upon whom so many looked for the 
next few years as the surviving associate of buried 
giants and the last type of Washingtonian politics, law, 
order, and high respectability, saw actually into the 
national situation about as far as one might hold out 
his hand before his eyes; and by that same length of 
measurement must be bounded his permanent fame. 



CHAPTER XXL 

ADMINISTRATION OF FRANKLIN PIERCE. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-third Congress. March 4, 1853-March 3, 
1855. — § II. Period of Thirty-fourth Congress. March 4, 
1855-March 3, 1857. 

WHEN the new year opened and Congress 
reassembled after the holidays, Franklin 
Pierce stood strong in the general con- 
fidence of the people of both sections. Swept into the 
Presidency as he had been by a great popular uprising, 
men of all parties who knew nothing of his personal 
fitness or antecedents had rallied to his sup- 
i8S4. port with zeal and even with enthusiasm. 
Juvenile in appearance, with a tinge of sad- 
ness occasioned by domestic sorrow, finely bearing him- 
self hitherto on all public occasions, most statesmen 
looked upon him as one who would lead the people into 
new and green pastures of peace and conciliation. The 
conditions under which he began were certainly favor- 
able to such hopes; for the Whigs were now dismem- 
bered and destroyed, and he stood the chosen leader of 
an overwhelming majority. But it is a foible of every 
democracy to make pets of the plausible and untried, 
and in its susceptible mood to invest its favorite with 
virtues and talents which he never possessed; for the 
public is like an ardent lover, and looks through a 
highly refracting medium. 



KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL 363 

Why were our Northern people so easily self- 
deceived? Why had they not perceived that political 
signs already pointed to pleasing the South beyond 
measure? Southern expansion, however, was a slow 
and uncertain project, and a more immediate benefac- 
tion of slave territory was in order from the sycophantic 
politicians. In the Kansas-Nebraska bill leaps forward 
the swift generator of new national discontent, new 
parties. Its originator was Stephen A. Douglas, am- 
bitious, forceful, and subservient; he had put his 
shoulder to the wheel of tropical annexation, a team 
which slavery drove; but now he mounted his own 
chariot. The bell of opportunity strikes, and the fog 
now lifting shows the great pacification of 1850, no 
longer the land's end of strife, as the charts had de- 
scribed it, but the rounding-point into a vast and 
illimitable jungle of sectional controversy, where tigers 
roar and scorpions stiffen to attack. 

The Senate was the scene of this agitating discovery. 
Here, without warning or suggestion, and as though 
selfish for the sole paternity of his scheme, Douglas, as 
chairman of the committee of territories, reported on 
the 4th of January a bill for the territorial government 
of Nebraska, a region embraced under the old Louisi- 
ana purchase, and apportioned to freedom by the 
famous Missouri Compromise act of 1820. One of 
the sections of this bill, copying the language used 
under the late compact of 1850 with reference to Utah 
and New Mexico, provided that whenever Nebraska 
should be admitted into the Union as a State or States, 
it should come in "with or without slavery," as its con- 
stitution at the time of admission might prescribe. "A 
proper sense of patriotic duty," explained Douglas, 
"enjoins the propriety and necessity of a strict adher- 



364 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ence to the principles, and even a literal adoption of 
the enactments, of the adjustment of 1850." 



Four years had passed since the consummation of 
fraternal unison, when the Wilmot Proviso, that pro- 
vocative of intestine strife, was laid under the vaults 
of the Capitol. And now was renewed the moral agita- 
tion, which had been soothed to rest with so much diffi- 
culty, in deadly and terrible earnest. No act of pre- 
tended grace was ever engrossed upon our government 
parchment so utterly uncalled for, and at the same time 
so despicable and so thoroughly subversive in the end 
of all that its originators professed to accomplish by it. 
That it was uncalled for, and in its concession to 
slavery equally a surprise to North and South, no one 
ever had the hardihood to dispute ; and the tone of the 
President's December message is proof at least that no 
such upheaval of internal policy was then contemplated. 
The organization of Nebraska territory had been pend- 
ing earlier, and bills previously introduced were of 
the usual form and purport ; not a single petition from 
the people of either section prayed Congress to repeal 
the Missouri settlement, or to organize this interior 
territory upon any other basis than the basis of that 
settlement which, for more than thirty years, had been 
peacefully acquiesced in. The despicableness of this 
new scheme was two-fold : it made freedom and slavery 
coequal from the national point of view, and it abro- 
gated a solemn compact. That it subverted its own 
ends will appear as this narrative continues. 

What possible motive, then, founded in a deep sense 
of public honor and responsibility, could have induced 
Northern statesmen, like Douglas and Franklin Pierce, 



SQUATTER SOVEREIGNTY 365 

to come forward with this boon which its recipients 
had never asked? Nothing deeper, we may feel as- 
sured, than sycophancy to the slave power, and the 
ambition which hoped to thrive by it. We had heard 
before of Northern statesmen, the representatives of 
free soil and a free constituency, who bowed and bent 
to that yoke, who yielded under pressure; but Douglas 
was the first of freedom's children who ran to throw 
open the gate to barbarism. America may smile now at 
the pathos and grandiloquence which invoked, in the 
name of justice, equal privilege and popular sover- 
eignty, the right of one class of human beings to hold 
another class, of different color, enthralled like dumb 
cattle. Of constitutional argument against the Mis- 
souri Compromise the courts were soon to give enough, 
for what our fundamentals of Union leave undefined, 
robed dignitaries will define by their own politics ; and, 
if slavery infected one limb of the government, it spread 
easily to another. But of that argument, as yet, the 
political leaders were timorous. Douglas would gladly 
have rested on his first base, and given to the Missouri 
Compromise a tacit quietus. Jefferson Davis, too, was 
hampered by the recollection that the extension of that 
compromise line to the Pacific had been his platform in 
1850. The Missouri compact, if not an ideal one, had 
given to freedom a share, at least, of the inheritance; 
it established good within certain confines, like that 
first of territorial compromises, the Ordinance of 1787, 
which, had it passed as Jefferson originally framed it, 
would have presently given the whole domain to free- 
dom, both north and south of the Ohio. That hand- 
somer scope was then prevented, because States south 
of Virginia reserved the rights of slavery for the terri- 
tory they ceded to the Union; and Tennessee, Mis- 



3 66 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

sissippi, and Alabama grew up slave States accord- 
ingly. 

"Give the fresh acreage henceforth to wheat and 
thistles, roses and weeds" — this was the magnanimity 
of the new gospel of popular or squatter sovereignty. 
The deeper danger of Clay's latest compromise, we have 
already seen, was in admitting that new territorial fal- 
lacy, though the fugitive-slave act caused the more 
instant irritation. "With or without slavery," that 
optional policy which the compromise of 1850 asserted 
over new soil wholly and indisputably belonging to the 
United States was sure to breed trouble, not only 
when its settlement should begin in earnest, but when- 
ever another acquisition came into the arms of the 
Union. More mischievous by far did the precedent 
actually prove, under the claim now set up by the 
authors of the Kansas-Nebraska act, that it retroacted 
upon the earlier territory of the Louisiana purchase — 
that it annulled the sacred pledge of 1820. Such was the 
argument in which Davis took afterwards a cynical 
delight, and which Douglas wielded as a two-edged 
sword. Wicked and impudent sophism ; and could only 
Clay or Webster have left his grave and stalked into the 
Senate-chamber, his look would have turned the man 
who uttered it into stone. Seward, in debate, had ap- 
pealed to the Southern Senators before him who sat in 
this chamber now, as four years ago, to say whether 
any one of them had dreamed that the compromise of 
1850 abrogated or impaired the Missouri Compro- 
mise; they were silent. He adjured them to say 
whether Clay or Webster, or either one of them, had so 
intended when procuring that compromise; and these 
fellow-members were silent again. Grant, if we must, 
that one Congress cannot bind forever — and, if that 



COMPACT OF 1820 BROKEN 367 

rule be good, the later compromise was no more sacred 
than the earlier one — yet the moral force of the Mis- 
souri settlement remained; slavery had received her 
equivalent under it in Missouri and Arkansas, and the 
vacant territories now organized belonged of right to 
freedom. Retroaction, in fine, has no part in settling 
domestic more than foreign controversies of such a 
character. In either case, we seek, not symmetry, but 
what the existing exigency requires. The settlement 
composes the matters of strife which are brought ex- 
pressly into it; immediate convenience and necessity 
are its object; it seeks to close new wounds, not to 
reopen old ones. As well go back to readjust the north- 
east boundary with Great Britain, after concluding the 
Oregon frontier, because the principle of the later treaty 
was a different one, as to unsettle the territorial status 
of our Louisiana purchase, once solemnly prescribed, 
for the sake of making it harmonize in principle with 
that which was set upon the domain we conquered 
afterwards from Mexico. 

The convenient logic of non-intervention in the ter- 
ritories must have been peculiarly captivating to North- 
ern Presidential aspirants of the era who wished to face 
in two directions. Slaveholding members, especially 
when the debate began, were disposed to be passive 
and accept the gift of the gods ; they did not wish to 
repudiate the Missouri settlement without Northern 
concurrence. But when one Northern Senator put the 
saddle upon this dogma, and another the bridle, while 
a Northern President obsequiously offered the stirrup, 
Southern chivalry acted by its instincts when it be- 
strode the steed to ride it. 

The consummation of this Kansas-Nebraska plot, 



368 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

which a few ambitious leaders had concocted, shook 
the free States once more to their centres 
May-sept. w * tn j ust indignation. Slavery was at length 
disclosed as an aggressive force bent upon 
dominating the policy of the American continent. 
Thousands of fair-minded citizens, who had been in- 
credulous, were at last convinced that mere abstinence 
from agitation and intermeddling would neither save 
the Union nor satisfy the Southerners. Northern 
Whigs, not too abject to value their moral self-respect, 
felt that they had compromised enough, and more than 
enough; that pious preaching and cowardly palliation 
would make us, if we went on thus, a nation of hypo- 
crites. Without the help of Southern Whigs, their late 
party associates — men like Pearce, Badger, Jones, 
Toombs, the plumed Stephens and the faltering Clay- 
ton — that treacherous bill would never have passed. 
"Repudiate such fraternity," was the cry; "throw old 
party considerations to the Avinds, and appeal to the 
honest people of the free States, without distinction of 
politics." And calling God to witness the justice of 
their cause, the better remnant of the Northern Whigs 
fled from the Sodom and Gomorrah where old com- 
pacts were smoking in the flames. Anti-slavery Demo- 
crats, Free Soilers, all who would unite with them to 
fight the Dagon of slave aggrandizement under the 
shield and banner of the constitution, were brothers. 
No matter that some were scrupulous of consequences, 
while others hoped in time to make the universe free; 
their common political ground was loyal and legitimate 
resistance to slavery extension into free national terri- 
tory. All opponents of slave extension might meet on 
this common platform. 

The project for fusing men of all the old parties who 



NEW PARTY MOVEMENTS 369 

were opposed to slavery extension into a new or anti- 
Nebraska party developed rapidly at the North. Free 
Soilers, old line Whigs, Wilmot-Proviso Democrats, 
men at the antipodes of sentiment, so far as the cause 
of practical emancipation was concerned, came into 
concert. But the process was necessarily gradual and 
tentative ; affairs were not yet ripe for national concert ; 
and the States and Congressional districts were this 
year the proper places for activity. 

In tracing the growth and influence of national 
parties, we must now take cognizance of the Native- 
American or Know-Nothing organization. This was 
a sort of exhalation, arising from the decay of old 
parties and putrid national issues ; it served as a brief 
phenomenon of the times and then passed off. Like 
anti-Masonry, its soap-bubble burst in the effort to 
blow up to the size of a Presidential factor. But some 
such political diversion suited quite tolerably the mood 
of that huge fraction of the people, loyal but disaffected 
on the usual issues, who felt just now political orphan- 
age. During that twelvemonth of delusive harmony 
which was broken so rudely by the discord of the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska strife, defeated Whigs and rebellious 
Democrats plunged thoughtlessly by the thousands into 
this new excitement of Native Americanism, and were 
led on eventually step by step until they found them- 
selves sworn members of a dark-lantern order, the 
opposite of anti-Masonry. The order was a secret one, 
popularly called "Know-Nothings," because its mem- 
bers, when questioned as to its methods and principles, 
were sworn to profess their entire ignorance. Abuses 
in the administration of large cities more especially 
they proposed to rectify by excluding foreigners from 
office. They revived the bitter spirit of intolerance 



37o EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

against the Roman Catholic Church — such as ten years 
before had been shown in the riots of Charlestown and 
Philadelphia — by representing it as foreign, the hand- 
maid of popular ignorance, and bent on chaining Amer- 
ica to the throne of the Vatican. 



Foreign relations for the next six years are dwarfed 
and overshadowed by the tremendous struggle for civil 

preponderance which now ensued between 
1855. the irreconcilable forces of freedom and 

slavery. That domestic struggle culminated 
during this same brief space of time in the political 
triumph of the one, followed promptly by the appeal of 
the other to disunion and the sword of civil war. What 
most absorbed public attention in those important years 
must now command ours as we retrace the course of 
portentous events. As for that cormorant appetite for 
seizing weak sovereignties to the southward and incor- 
porating them with the American Union — that hungry 
zeal to extend a protectorate over Central America, to 
annex Cuba, to split off new sections of Mexican ter- 
ritory fringing upon our national borders — that whole 
misguided policy of robbery and subjugation which 
seeks to conceal its cruel features under the mask of 
manifest destiny — its symptoms become of secondary 
consequence. External and forced expansion towards 
the tropics was but one element of the cotton slave- 
holders' policy to propagate their peculiar institutions, 
or, at least, to keep slavery in good countenance against 
what seemed to them the meddlesome philanthropy of 
mankind. It had started out with this Democratic ad- 
ministration as the predominant element ; but the Kan- 
sas-Nebraska bill of Douglas, which gave slavery an 



STRUGGLE IN KANSAS 371 

unexpected entrance into freedom's solemn reserva- 
tions, distracted the glut of distant conquest. The wolf 
grew more ravenous than ever; but, ravenous in two 
different directions, he roused up enemies too mighty 
for him. 

Kansas now becomes the foreground of public inter- 
est, the battle-field where freedom and slavery gird up 
their loins and contend for the mastery. Of the two 
territories, Kansas and Nebraska, both of which were 
set apart for the new experiment of popular sov- 
ereignty, desecrated and driven from the sanctuary of 
that former decree which prohibited slavery altogether, 
Kansas was the more southerly, and from its situation 
the more suitable for planting institutions of bondage. 
It occupied nearly the same parallel as Virginia, and 
lay due west of the slave State of Missouri, whose 
boundaries were next adjacent. This whole interior 
region of Kansas and Nebraska had hitherto remained 
practically unsettled and little known ; but its invitation 
was to agriculture, and peaceful rivers meandered 
through its soft scenery. 

Kansas presented a tame and uniform aspect of 
gently undulating ridges and valleys; its territory, as 
now defined, extending northward from our Indian 
reservations to the fortieth parallel of latitude, and 
west from the State of Missouri to the Rocky Moun- 
tains. In this broad parallelogram was embraced an 
area reckoned at about 126,000 square miles. At the 
passage of the Douglas bill, Kansas was an Indian 
reservation; and the fact that Indians would be de- 
spoiled of their rightful domains by erecting this terri- 
tory was urged very strongly in debate by Everett, 
Bell, Houston, and others, who, timorous on the main 
issue involved in the bill, laid strong hold upon second- 



372 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ary objections. About some scattered missions here of 
the Southern Methodist Church, and on the farms of a 
few capricious squatters, slaves appear to have been 
worked for several years previously. Had Congress 
passed the territorial act anticipated, in compliance 
with the restrictions of 1820, that abuse would have 
been easily expelled. But now this compromise was 
rescinded, and Kansas might be admitted as a State, 
"with or without slavery," according to the option of 
its inhabitants hereafter. 



The national convention of the new Republican party 
assembled at Philadelphia, June 17, 1856, pursuant to 

the call of a Pittsburg meeting of February 
1856. 22, whose invitation was freely extended to 

all who thought alike upon the new crisis of 
affairs, "without regard to past political differences or 
divisions." Old Whigs, Wilmot-Proviso Democrats, 
and Free Soilers came together, but the slave States in 
general held haughtily back. Henry S. Lane, of In- 
diana, was chosen chairman ; and, in a platform full of 
felicitous phrases, the convention, strongly affirming 
its allegiance to the constitution, the Union, and the 
rights of States, laid down that Congress had sov- 
ereign power over the national territories, and ought to 
exercise that power not to assist slavery, but to pro- 
hibit it. An informal ballot being had for candidates, 
John C. Fremont, of California, the pathfinder, led 
strongly for President, and nearly all the votes being 
cast in his favor on a first formal ballot, his nomination 
was made unanimous. For Vice-President, a conserva- 
tive citizen, William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, was 
nominated in the same harmonious spirit. 



THE REPUBLICAN PARTY 373 

True was it, in a physical sense, that the present Re- 
publican party began by being geographical. But this 
was from the force of accidental circumstances, and be- 
cause the South had departed from the faith of the 
fathers, and refused either to have emancipation dis- 
cussed or to confine the slave system to the fifteen 
States in which it now existed. In the truly enlight- 
ened sense it was slavery that was sectional and geo- 
graphical, while freedom was national and universal. 
And yet, in the prevailing opinion of the voting mass,. 
North as well as South, Republicanism this year was 
doomed to defeat; such was the reverence felt for 
Union, as influenced by long precedent and the equi- 
librium of systems. 

"We have lost a battle," was the comment of a Re- 
publican organ on the day after election ; "the Bunker 
Hill of the new struggle for freedom is past ; the Sara- 
toga and Yorktown are yet to be achieved." And 
surely, when these electoral results were fully reckoned, 
they might well have carried dismay to the citadel of 
pro-slavery strength. Never had so great a work been 
done by a political party within the first year of its birth, 
against deep and inveterate prejudices which were too 
irrational not to diminish, should provocation to free 
sentiment continue. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

ADMINISTRATION OF JAMES BUCHANAN. 

§ I. Period of Thirty-fifth Congress. March 4, 1857-March 3, 
1859. — § II. Period of Thirty-sixth Congress. March 4, 1859- 
March 3, 1861. 

HUMAN ambition is the constant motive force 
of public events, the staple of historical nar- 
ration. And the world's experience shows 
that the meaner ambition of place for the sake of power 
and pelf dominates men's minds more than the desire 
to use high station for the good of the governed. In a 
fierce and fighting age, one wades through slaughter to 
reach the supreme distinction; while under the soften- 
ing influences of a settled and peaceful government, 
whose prizes are awarded by the general suffrage, his 
constant temptation is to resort to corrupt, insidious, 
and flattering arts for gaining promotion from his 
fellow-citizens. Among statesmen struggling for im- 
mediate popularity, even the noblest are in danger of 
weakening in the high principles which their hearts tell 
them are right, while the coarser-grained grovel and 
fawn obsequiously, as though the title to superiority 
on their part involved no gift of discernment beyond 
the common level, or as panderers to the particular lust 
which those who can elevate them to office wish grati- 
fied. 

In the American days we are describing, the fountain 
of national honors was in full possession of the Demo- 



DEMOCRACY PERVERTED 375 

cratic party — a party whose deepest principles had 
splendid vigor and vitality, but whose immediate policy 
had become dangerously perverted. That perversion 
was owing to the new crusade slavery was urging 
against the enlightenment of the age; and the slave 
power, the oligarchy of human capital, now ruled the 
Democratic party, the fountain of honors, and the 
citadel of national strength. The moral opposition of 
the world only whetted slavery's desire to overrule that 
opposition ; and it grew tyrannous and exacting in these 
days, to the verge of rebellion. It was the Praetorian 
band which fixed and unfixed administrations, and like 
its Roman prototype, made up for inferiority in num- 
bers by compact strength, discipline, and unity of pur- 
pose. How many political leaders of these times bent 
to its iron dictates, and in consequence sank into their 
graves, moral and corruptible, with honors as earthy 
as their epitaphs. Pierce, Cass, Douglas, and hun- 
dreds of others less conspicuous, are of that number; 
and the record of a new four years will constrain us 
to add Buchanan. It is something for fame to have 
filled high stations — to have heaped office upon office, 
performed weighty functions, dispensed wide patron- 
age; these are among the good things which are en- 
joyed in this life and exhausted. But where is post- 
humous fame, where is the gratitude of coming genera- 
tions, when one's sordid ambition has been confined to 
making himself solid with the ruling and transitory 
influences which enable him to rise, and he leaves to 
posterity neither the inspiration of a great cause nor a 
great example? 



Rebellion in Utah — that far-off territory where a 






376 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

population of aliens submitted to a strange hierarchy — 
was an issue that forced comparisons with Kansas. It 
was less the suppression of polygamous practices that 
our administration cared for — for the Republicans 
might engross all moral agitation for their own party 
benefit — than to keep these strange settlers obedient to 
the constitution and the laws. Even in the latter sense 
alone, Utah contradicted that pompous formula of non- 
intervention by the general government which had been 
preached up so strongly for Kansas. For what boots 
it to spill the nation's blood and treasure in acquiring 
new territory, that hostile and treacherous systems may 
be planted and reared there by those who colonize? 
National indulgence here had made Mormonism more 
defiant and disaffected to the Union. All the tenets 
and policy of that church, under its despotic leaders, 
had tended to secure an Israelitish seclusion, in con- 
tempt of all external and temporal authority. To this 
would-be "State of Deseret" President Fillmore had 
assigned Brigham Young, the spiritual head of the 
church, as territorial governor; and by 1857, when a 
Democratic President showed the disposition to apply 
the usual temporal rule of rotation to the office, Young 
was rebellious, and the whole Mormon population, re- 
fusing allegiance to any one but their consecrated head, 
began to drill and gird on their armor for resistance. 
Judges of the territorial courts had to flee for 
1857-58. their lives ; justice, which had long been tam- 
pered with to absolve church members from 
punishment, was deprived of process. It was charged 
that the Mormon hierarchy had leagued with Indian 
tribes to impel them to atrocities against the Gentile 
inhabitants, while their own Danites, or destroying 
angels, were secretly set apart and bound by horrid 



MORMONISM IN UTAH 377 

oath to pillage and murder such as made themselves 
obnoxious to the theocracy. This was popular sov- 
ereignty with a vengeance. But in 1858 that rebellion 
was put forcibly down. 



Douglas and Lincoln were formidable adversaries of 
each other, and a long linking of events had some- 
how opposed them in an antagonism which 
was permanent and inveterate. With a 1858. 
pathos almost bitter, Lincoln recalled that 
while through the long years they had pursued 
ambition by their different methods he had thus 
far failed, his rival had gained splendid success 
and a name that filled the whole Union with applause ; 
and yet honors that he said he would not have pur- 
chased at the price paid for them. With all his popular 
qualities, his great natural parts, the real love of 
country which mingled no doubt with all his dross of 
sycophancy and spread-eagleism, so that he could stir 
the heart by forceful appeal to patriotic feelings, Doug- 
las, no doubt, as Lincoln regarded him, was cunning 
and unscrupulous in obtaining his ends. Lincoln him- 
self was a sagacious politician, and not above advancing 
his own ends, where he could do so honorably; but 
earnestness grew upon him with years, and the new 
Free-Soil movement which followed upon the repeal of 
the Missouri Compromise gave him a cause which en- 
listed his whole heart, adding that incentive to leader- 
ship and mastery of his subject which the economic 
topics of Whig policy, his first political love, had ill 
supplied. Strong impulse to a self-made man supplies 
the place of education. Lincoln, now in the full ma- 
turity of his powers, was without comprehensive 



378 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

knowledge of public affairs ; but with a strong craving 
to dive into the depths of the truth, and a well-settled 
conviction that American slavery was wrong in itself 
and injuriously spreading, he had plunged into the 
study of the question in all its historical, moral, and 
constitutional aspects, and brought up a wealth of rich 
argument and illustration, which his lucid mind set 
forth in a quaint and original but strongly persuasive 
manner — persuasive most of all with the plain multi- 
tude, with the millions of common men throughout the 
North with whom at this time Lincoln was in entire 
sympathy, and who, like himself, wished to reconcile 
loyalty to the Union and justice to Southern rights with 
obedience to a better law divine. In such minds grew 
up the strong belief that, while existing slave States 
were exempt from national interference, there could be 
no extension of the slave system further without 
national participation and a national crime. 

Douglas, at Chicago, in early July, answered the 
speech which Lincoln had made to the Republican con- 
vention on the evening of his nomination. The two 
then carried on a joint debate at various interior towns 
between the 21st of August and the 15th of September 
— thousands of the country folk gathering at each place 
by wagon or on foot, but no political flags or mottoes 
being allowed. Each orator presented most strikingly 
the strong points of his case, and neither the patroniz- 
ing condescension nor the skilful thrusts of the famous 
statesman who was by all odds the readiest speaker in 
the United States Senate, could disconcert for a mo- 
ment his adversary, whose good humor warded off the 
shafts which were intended for ridicule. Genial and 
rollicking with the boys, and yet confident to the point 
of arrogance in a controversy, and even supercilious, 



THE ILLINOIS DEBATE 379 

Douglas aired his "care-nothing" views upon the moral 
aspects of slavery, and vaunted it as the generous and 
liberal policy of the age — as the "great principle" for 
patriotic souls who knew no sectional limits to unite 
upon — to acquire, extend, and expand our boundaries, 
leaving whomsoever might settle upon it to plant insti- 
tutions, slave or free, as their own choice. Herein 
Douglas appeared to less advantage than in the late 
Lecompton debates, where he had been clearly right. 
Not careful to take his position justly, and feeling the 
need of reconciling his late votes with his whole former 
career as an active ally of the Southern Democracy, 
and of regaining what he could of their support pres- 
ently, he was forced back to his old trick of misrepre- 
senting Republican doctrines and jeering at "negro 
equality." But he was a powerful and impressive man 
to gaze upon, looking with his small but compact stature 
like a lion's whelp ; he shook back his heavy hair, and in 
his most impressive passages roared with a loud voice, 
articulating thickly and making violent gestures. 
Lincoln's power as an orator lay not less in his strong 
individuality ; but tall, awkward in the use of his limbs, 
and with a voice piercing rather than melodious in his 
most animated periods, his charm flowed rather from 
the impression he gave that his convictions were genu- 
ine and his whole nature imbued with the simple and 
uncondescending love of his fellow-men. 

It was not time yet for broad philanthropy to infuse 
the sentiment of Lincoln's State. Douglas prevailed, 
as for various reasons it was natural he should have 
done. He was canvassing this time for political ex- 
istence, against foes of his own party who were bent 
on destroying him. The hostility of the Buchanan 
cabinet towards him created friends among Republi- 



380 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

can opponents. But the popular verdict upon the 
contest of principle, aside from present candidates, was 
on the other side; and the Republicans of the State, 
though defeated for the time, remembered their stand- 
ard-bearer, "honest Abe/' with proud affection and 
gratitude. Lincoln's campaign speeches achieved for 
him a splendid Western reputation; they were seen to 
be of a very high order — pungent, clear as crystal 
in their logic and expression, and truly admira- 
ble as condensed statements of the national issues at 
stake. 

One remarkable statement drawn out from Douglas 
in this joint debate showed the schism which was widen- 
ing in the Democratic ranks by the agency of the Dred 
Scott decision. According to the President, the slave- 
holders, and all who accepted the fiat of the court in 
that celebrated case, "the great principle of popular 
sovereignty" was largely restrained; for the right to 
hold slaves in a territory was declared by a majority of 
the judges to exist, by virtue of the Federal compact, 
until the territory grew to statehood, and chose to ex- 
clude the right under a State constitution. This was 
no application of the Douglas dogma to canvass a 
Northwestern State upon ; and Douglas, when pressed 
in debate for his opinion on this point, took the ground 
that, whatever the Supreme Court might decide on the 
abstract question, the people of a territory had the law- 
ful means to introduce or exclude slavery as they 
pleased. For slavery could not exist a day or an hour 
unless supported by local police regulations, and the 
local legislature could "by unfriendly legislation" 
effectually prevent its introduction. This answer suffi- 
ciently commended Douglas to his constituents of 
Illinois for re-election to the Senate, but as a Presi- 



LINCOLN AND DOUGLAS 381 

dential aspirant it sealed his doom, for the breach with 
the Southern and ruling wing of the Democracy was 
thenceforth irreparable. 

Had Lincoln been equally exposed to public gaze at 
this time as a national candidate, he, too, might have 
suffered, like so many who appeal to popular favor, the 
victim of bold phrases. Though shrewd and practical 
at all times, disposed to confine himself to the immediate 
evil which needed correction, and scrupulous of all 
intervening rights, he could not have studied the stu- 
pendous problem of the times so profoundly as he had 
done without some prophetic forecast of the future. In 
his speech of acceptance he had said : "A house divided 
against itself cannot stand. I believe this government 
cannot endure permanently half slave and half free. 
I do not expect the Union to be dissolved — I do not 
expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to 
be divided. It will become all of one thing or all of the 
other." No wonder that Lincoln's friends were 
troubled at this bold utterance. No wonder that his 
adversary tore at it with holy rage as abolition heresy, 
the advocacy of sectional war, fratricide, servile insur- 
rection, and the blotting out of States. It happened 
that the same idea was expressed this autumn by 
Seward, in a Rochester speech, which pronounced in 
more ornate language the same prediction. There was, 
he declared, "an irrepressible conflict" between oppos- 
ing and enduring forces, which, sooner or later, would 
make the United States either entirely a slaveholding 
or entirely a free-labor nation. It was not a new 
prophecy on his part, nor bolder than he had uttered 
years earlier; but Seward was now the most eminent 
expounder of the Republican faith, and the most prob- 
able standard-bearer of his party for i860; hence the 



3 82 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

phrase, which was caught up everywhere, made him a 
shining mark for his foes. Both Seward and Lincoln 
were right; and they proposed no brutal and bloody 
interference with constitutional rights, but aid and com- 
fort to the cause of emancipation where slave States 
were concerned, besides higher moral tone and purpose 
for all occasions. Freedom's host was still timorous; 
many of the politicians in council would have turned 
the Republican party out to browse among secular 
projects, now that Kansas had emerged from its worst 
plight; and the angry roar of dissent which went up 
from every quarter of the Union against the "irre- 
pressible conflict" theory showed that loyalty was blind 
to the signs of the time. 



Presidential movements were now in progress. The 
early national convention of the Democrats had been 
set already for Charleston, as though that 
1859. party, already infatuated with the South, 
were descending into the very hot-bed of 
secession and aristocratic obduracy. The heated 
wrangle of the New York "hards" and "softs" in their 
recent State convention was one of many indications 
that this next national gathering would split up in irrec- 
oncilable feud. 

Three Southern speeches had been promulgated 
during the anxious summer by three Southern leaders 
of different types. Stephens of Georgia, Rhett of 
South Carolina, and Jefferson Davis were the several 
speakers : the first, to his constituents on the occasion 
of his retirement from Congress; the second, on the 
celebration day of our independence; the third, before 
the Democratic State convention at Jackson. Rhett, 



NEW SLAVERY DOGMAS 383 

who had long since left the Senate and public life, 
uttered rank secession ; and for years he had prophesied 
and dissolved the Union to the best of his ability. 
Stephens spoke as one whose interests still centred in 
the Union; Davis, as a Unionist upon condition. "If 
a President," said the latter, "should be elected on the 
platform of Seward's Rochester speech, then let the 
Union be dissolved." 

The scheme of national policy which the two greater 
of these orators advanced laid stress upon the newly 
discovered right which Southern slaveholders pos- 
sessed, to settle with their human property in the terri- 
tories, protected by the constitution on a platform of 
equal rights. In the triumph of such a principle the 
slavery exclusion doctrine of Rufus King, the Missouri 
Compromise doctrine, and the Texas doctrine had all 
been abandoned. But non-intervention, aided by the 
Dred Scott decision, did not go far enough. ( 1 ) They 
wished Congress to enact a slave code, to give positive 
protection to slave property in the public domain while 
the territorial condition lasted. (2) And more than 
this, since the natural increase of the African stock 
was not enough for the extension and preservation of 
Southern institutions, it was desirable to repeal the act 
of Congress which made the African slave trade 
piracy; that whole subject belonging more properly to 
the discretion of the several States. (3) External ex- 
pansion was the last great principle for the South to 
carry out; Central America and Mexico were open to 
our acquisition, and Cuba most of all. Stephens was 
not in favor of paying Spain much for her island ; but 
if Cuba wished to come into the Union, he was for re- 
pealing the neutrality laws so as to give our people a 
chance to help her. Davis kept a clear eye upon con- 



384 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tingencies; he viewed the acquisition of such a prize 
as advantageous to the whole Union if the Union con- 
tinued, and of still greater advantage to the South in 
the event of a new confederacy. 

These three new points of Democratic departure, all 
aggressive, might well alarm the friends of freedom. 
Slaveholding philosophy was making its votaries mad. 
To Stephens's mind it seemed that slavery was stronger 
to-day than ever before. And Davis solved by 
ethnology the whole relation of the weaker races; 
negroes, he affirmed, had not here nor in Liberia shown 
capacity for self-governing, and hence the good of 
society required that they should be kept in their normal 
condition of servitude. Davis was a public leader 
whom Stephens himself, feeble by comparison in ex- 
ecutive force, deferred to. He was unquestionably the 
foremost man of the far South at the present day ; and 
since Quitman's death his command could not be dis- 
puted. Energy, boldness, and consummate weight of 
character had given him a national reputation and influ- 
ence; his style of speech was trenchant and analytical, 
with an occasional arrogance which betrayed the train- 
ing of a soldier and plantation lord, as well as his keen 
consciousness of mental superiority. This thin, pale, 
polished, and intellectual-looking son of Mississippi, of 
passive demeanor and habitual courtesy, sat in the 
national Congress among commonplace, blustering, and 
bibulous colleagues, almost the only man left there of 
that higher grade of Southern gentlemen which was 
once so common in public life. To the projects of 
policy which Davis now brought forward the opinion 
of the cotton States was already moving. Efforts, for 
instance, were already there in progress to reopen the 
African slave trade — the first step being to denational- 



JOHN BROWN HANGED 385 

ize the crime. And truly if slave traffic were morally 
right, and the local supply insufficient, why was not 
the argument a good one? The Southern mind was 
undergoing a change on this question. Public men of 
the old school, like Houston and Wise, might speak 
with abhorrence of the proposal, but the great Jeffer- 
son himself was out of date in posthumous inspiration, 
and the act to which he had placed his signature no 
longer sacred. 



John Brown was no Caesar, no Cromwell, but a plain 
citizen of a free republic, whom distressing events 
drove into a fanaticism to execute purposes 
to which he was incompetent. He detested 1859. 
slavery, and that detestation led him to take 
up arms not only against slavery, but against that 
public opinion which was slowly formulating how best 
to eradicate it. Woe to the conquered. The North 
made no appeals for that clemency which slaveholders 
had alone to consider. Brown had not been lenient to 
masters, nor were masters bound to be lenient to him. 
And yet Brown was an enthusiast, and not a felon ; the 
essence of his crime was unselfish. Like the French 
country maiden who went to Paris to plunge her dagger 
into a bloody ruler's heart, he meant to rescue good 
morals from the usurpation of human laws. Corday 
fulfilled her solitary plan because it was reasonable; 
John Brown failed in his plan because it was unrea- 
sonable; but both, as actors and martyrs, flashing upon 
the world's attention like new meteors, left examples 
of self-sacrifice, the one upon the guillotine, and the 
other upon the gallows, which a people could not re- 
frain from exalting. The virgin damsel of grace and 



386 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

beauty, and the grim old man of sixty, stern and san- 
guinary, who led on his sons, take equal hold of pos- 
terity's imagination; of each one it has been said, by 
acute observers, that the immediate effect of their deeds 
was injurious to politics; and yet society in the long 
centuries is stronger for being thus taught that despot- 
ism over fellow-men is not safely hedged in by au- 
thority. Brown's stalwart, unique, and spectral figure 
led on, grotesque but terribly in earnest, the next time 
Virginia's soil was invaded — not, however, for exe- 
cuting any such unfeasible scheme of making the slaves 
their own avengers, but to apply the war powers of the 
nation against disloyal masters. 



The Republican Convention met May 16th, i860, at 
Chicago; and a place more in contrast with the Pal- 
metto city, more typical of another civilization, this 
Union could not have furnished. Charleston, where 
the Democratic convention was held, to be split 
asunder, was aristocratic, dogmatic, disdainful of the 
plebeian mass, and disposed to brood over the past; 
Chicago was prosaic, and like its rectangular system of 
streets splendidly commonplace, boastful through 
vanity rather than pride, brimming with the ostenta- 
tious hospitality of sudden wealth; yet growing upon 
the margins which remained from its mortgages to 
Eastern capital, so as to seem more wealthy and expan- 
sive than it really was. This lake city, without a past but 
absorbed in the present and future, was the genuine 
product of free settlement and free institutions; the 
wide-awake commercial and distributing centre of the 
great Northwest, whose foible was the ambition to be 
the light of the world ; prolific, and figuring its popula- 



REPUBLICAN CONVENTION 387 

tion so rapidly as to be already near the point of taking 
the crown from the old "queen of the West" — for Cin- 
cinnati, from her border position acquired a certain 
constraint and conservatism which her younger sister 
and rival never owned. 

The breezy Northwest had been the first originator 
of freedom's Republican party; Illinois, a State of 
Jacksonian farmers who had voted constantly the 
Democratic ticket, was important to win over; and 
Chicago had not procured the proud distinction of the 
present Republican convention on her remote slope 
without intending to drive a trade and coin direct ad- 
vantage out of free-handed entertainment, as was cus- 
tomary with her citizens. The Republican party had 
been looking about anxiously for a winning candidate. 
Made up of such incongruous elements, and in some 
sense fortuitous ones, it had brought together, in spite 
of great leaders and great ideas, a host of small-fry 
agitators and fanatics, men whose range of vision was 
fixed upon one spot, or who had no range of vision at 
all. Hypocrites also were in plenty, as they always are 
when moral reforms are preached, and the little great, 
"fishing" (to apply the disdainful phrase of Everett) 
"with ever freshly baited hook in the turbid waters of 
ephemeral popularity." It was scarcely a step from 
these regenerators of a society which gave them no 
recognition to the ranting fanatics, the disunionists, 
and the foul instigators of free love, passional attrac- 
tion, and individual sovereignty, who occupied the near 
background. Conservatism in all things was still the 
strong force of American society, and the name of 
radical was thought only less unendurable than that of 
abolitionist. The practical concerns of the country 
were constantly brought up against mere preachers; 



388 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

not even Republicans, in the mass, believed seriously 
that the Union would last without a slaveholding caste ; 
and it was no wonder that those against whose heads 
were flung the ugly epithets of "freedom-shrieker," 
"negro- worshipper," "woolly-head" and "Black Re- 
publican" — or at least the politicians among them — 
should seek for better ballast by winning from among 
their Northern fellow-citizens as many as possible of 
that solid and respectable set who held the social keys 
and were in league with the college-bred. Amid all 
these efforts for changing and broadening the scope of 
the new Anti-Nebraska party — this spreading of the 
net to catch conservatives — while others, again, had a 
hyper-devotion for the negro cause which betokened 
insincerity — many of the best Republicans doubted seri- 
ously that the anti-slavery men had either the faith or 
the sagacity to make a President. There were not, 
they thought, enough anti-slavery men who were hon- 
est; while as for the impracticables, the rabid abolition- 
ists, slavery had not another body of servitors half so 
useful and efficient. 

The Republicans had been hoping since 1856 to con- 
quer in i860. Though the Democratic schism was a 
godsend to them, yet the charge of sectionalism was a 
heavy load to carry. The ideal candidate would have 
been from one of the slave States, but there was no one 
with weight of character sufficient. Edward Bates, of 
Missouri, a former Whig, came nearest to this descrip- 
tion, but he was better fitted to counsel than direct. 
Seward was, by all odds, the foremost man in the 
party ; as governor and senator of the greatest State in 
the Union, he had borne the burden and heat of the 
cause long before public sympathy came to his side. 



LINCOLN NOMINATED 389 

Chase, his worthiest competitor, conceded to him the 
merit of superiority. But years and increasing success 
had raised up rivals to Seward, while he had been the 
target of all party foes ; and prophet though he was, his 
"irrepressible conflict" made men afraid of defeat under 
him as a standard-bearer. While the sagacious had 
thus looked about, Illinois Republicans had pushed 
their peculiar candidate in such a way that should 
Seward, the natural nominee for President, fail of 
success, he would forestall all others. And surely, in 
the candidacy of "honest Abe Lincoln," there was 
something which announced him as, almost providen- 
tially, the man for the times. His Whig antecedents, 
and his whole cast and habits, indulged the idea of con- 
servatism ; locality was in his favor, could disappointed 
rivals from the greater States take up the march under 
him; if not a slaveholder, the whole record of his life 
and early struggles exemplified the happy transfer from 
slave to free institutions ; while his unique and striking 
personality, his sympathetic qualities, his raciness, and 
the homely honesty and steadfast moral purpose which 
lit up his whole character, were sure to impress the 
people in his favor. And withal, Lincoln's long ab- 
sence from public service favored that unacquaintance 
for which many an ambitious man would gladly ex- 
change that dangerous talisman, a public record. And 
finally, there was something like poetic justice in 
putting forward the man who had won over Douglas 
a moral victory to oppose him again on a fairer field. 
Lincoln had been strong enough in the convention of 
1856 to poll a respectable vote as Vice-President; but 
he was now immeasurably stronger, though far from 
being appreciated beyond his immediate environment, 



390 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

in his consummate tact and the subtler qualities of his 
statesmanship. 



It was the opportunity for Buchanan to have sounded 
a trumpet note which would disconcert disloyal citizens 

and recall the doubtful to their duty. Lincoln 
DeJeSber. an d the Republicans had fairly won the 

election. But the President, with three 
months longer to serve, had not in him the stuff of 
heroic purpose. He was a loyal man after his sort, 
but secessionism raged about him, and kept its last 
clutch upon his cabinet circle. His opening message 
was craven and cowardly for the emergency ; its whole 
scope was to upbraid the people for their choice of a 
President, and exhort them to fall upon their knees to 
propitiate the fellow-citizens they had out-voted, and 
avert the dire calamity of disunion which otherwise 
seemed inevitable. Explanatory amendments to the 
constitution were suggested as a basis of capitulation — 
slavery to be recognized as rightful in all States now or 
hereafter choosing to adopt the system; negro owner- 
ship to be protected in all national domains while the 
territorial condition lasted ; all State laws which inter- 
fered with the surrender of fugitive slaves to be null 
and void. The inefficacy of the constitution to pre- 
serve the Union against domestic violence, such as now 
impended, was maintained in a fine-spun argument to 
the effect that, while secession was unlawful, a State 
which attempted to secede could not be coerced into 
submission. 

In short, the President's message, whose loyal ex- 
pression was strained in the skim-milk of apology, was 



BUCHANAN FALTERS 391 

ill-calculated for anything but to encourage disunion 
to go on with its work. There was no vigor in it, no 
backbone ; transgressors were not recalled to their loyal 
obligations ; no money, no military strength, no means 
of collecting the public revenue or of protecting the 
public property were asked for; some phrases might 
be tortured into one view of executive responsibility, 
others into another, but the too evident meaning of the 
whole was irresolution. 

"Oh, for an hour of Jackson!" was the spontaneous 
cry of conscience Democrats. Never before was the 
weak joint of our constitutional armor so clearly ex- 
posed, which kept the whole resources of this vast gov- 
ernment sequestered for four months after the people 
had declared their will, in control of an administration 
and Congress defeated at the polls. 

Southern disunionists did not falter; they were not 
spinning out distinctions, just now, for the vanity of a 
constitutional argument, but they went straight for- 
ward to their object. South Carolina took the field 
quickly. The State convention met at Columbia on the 
17th of December, but small-pox prevailing there, an 
adjournment was carried so as to meet at Charleston 
on the following day. A salute of fifteen guns — one 
for each slaveholding State — welcomed the members 
to this latter city. On the 20th of the month an ordi- 
nance of secession, reported from an appropriate com- 
mittee, was unanimously adopted; and after being en- 
grossed on parchment, was publicly signed by all the 
members of the convention — one hundred and sixty- 
nine in number — who thought, no doubt, that in their 
chamber fame was born. A "declaration of independ- 
ence" followed on the 24th, which borrowed the im- 



392 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

mortal phrase of Philadelphia in mutually pledging 
"our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." 



We were now on the verge of a terrible civil conflict, 
costly and sanguinary as the world ever knew. Private 
citizens, in many instances, saw its approach 
March, more clearly than did statesmen long experi- 
enced in public life. Thirty-one millions of 
inhabitants, bristling geographically on two sides in 
hostile array — more than ten times the whole number 
that had withstood the mother country in the first strug- 
gle for American independence — was a spectacle for 
the world to contemplate with amazement. Events 
hurried to the climax of arms before either side was 
well aware of it. In the free States more especially, so 
strong had grown the habit of belief in the perpetuity 
of the Union that men clung tenaciously to the idea 
that political craft would span the situation as it had 
often done before; that negotiation, honorable or dis- 
honorable, some new bundle of mutual concessions, 
would bolster up the old league of social systems. Not 
until the rash cannon of South Carolina thundered at 
Fort Sumter was that illusory hope dispelled ; and when 
the defenders of the Union and the avengers of the 
insulted starry banner sprang to arms, each party to the 
conflict found foemen worthy of his steel. What splen- 
did prowess of victory, could those ranks have been 
seen reuniting to march all one way against a common 
foe. And with such a spirit of deadly earnest in the 
strife, it was inevitable that they who had invited it, 
weakened and handicapped by the very system of bond- 
age they had plunged into secession with the foolish 
hope of preserving, should bite the dust. Numbers, 



THE BLOODY ONSET 393 

resources, ingenuity, the opinion of the civilized world, 
were all against them. And yet the responsibilities of 
the Union cause at the time when the first Republican 
President came to assume them must have been appall- 
ing. 

"Conspiracy," "treason," were names at first applied, 
all too narrowly, to those who struggled to break from 
the Union. "Rebellion" is a more enduring and ap- 
propriate word ; but to a strife of such gigantic propor- 
tions the law has been compelled to concede so many 
belligerent privileges that the status, as time goes on, 
will be recognized, more and more, as that of a "civil 
war." We must divest ourselves of the false impres- 
sion that the crime of a few Southern leaders produced 
the real mischief. Plunderers, treacherous abusers, 
like Floyd, Thompson, and Twiggs, of the power con- 
fided in them, must ever be execrated by all who re- 
spect honor and principle ; but they who led the cotton 
States into rebellion felt a strong public opinion behind 
them, and led in what among their own constituents 
was a popular cause. To be sure, they passed from 
conventions to a provisional confederacy with little of 
what, in the purest American sense, seemed like a sub- 
mission to the popular vote. That, however, was in 
pursuance of class and oligarchical political methods 
to which the slave section of the country had been well 
accustomed. 

Among these earlier seceding States, at least, which 
bore with enthusiasm the standard of slavery propa- 
gandism, misconception, false education, and the habits 
of life which a slave system fosters, made the cause of 
their new revolution a popular one. Men rallied here 
to destroy the Union as readily as at the North to 
uphold it ; and that latent loyalty, upon which our gov- 



394 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ernment reckoned in the early days of the war to pro- 
duce a counter-revolution proved always a fallacious 
hope. The philosophy of Southern statesmanship was, 
in truth, poisoned and vitiated at its source by the 
sophistries of the great Calhoun, that pure-minded man 
of dual character, devoted in his last years to the ex- 
periment which now bore fruit, whose strong feelings 
set him to some resolute purpose, for which his subtle 
and ingenious mind worked out the logical reasons. 
The harm diffused thus throughout the South was that 
not uncommon one of taking false maxims for first 
principles. Secession and slavery became thus ab- 
stractly right ; the economics of slave labor, the potent 
forces which must rule the world; loyalty to the State 
and to the slave system took priority of loyalty to the 
Union ; and for years dreams of ambition and cupidity 
had drawn this people insensibly onward to the preci- 
pice of disunion. And thus the new Confederacy, 
which leaders now struck to establish, was but the 
attempted realization of visions long indulged. The 
majority of States and of the American people had been 
trained differently. 

Some have thought that Davis and his compeers of 
the Montgomery Congress hoped still for concessions 
from the North which would save the Union, after the 
manner of former compromises. Facts do not justify 
altogether this favorable view, though many, no doubt, 
cherished that belief for a time in States, like Virginia, 
which long wavered. South Carolina was confident, 
self-sufficient ; and among the bold and buoyant spirits 
who set rebellion in motion, the real belief appears 
rather to have been that they would yet dictate terms, 
and reconstruct the old Union upon their new basis. 
But what they reckoned upon, with even more fatuous 



A CIVIL WAR 395 

confidence, was the cowardly inertness of the free 
States. They anticipated no war which would draw 
out the whole resources of the Union against them; 
they expected, at the least, to be let alone ; left to secede 
in peace, and to arrange some division of the common 
debts and property. The North, on its own part, failed 
to understand the South; here it was too commonly 
believed that slaveholders would bluster and come back 
again, as they had done before; that in a strife so un- 
equal they would not fight. This rebellion had been 
ripening ever since slavery became a growing force in 
our Union, partaking of the national spirit of expan- 
sion. And because slavery and freedom were both 
expanding and enduring forces in those days, the 
collision, which compromise had but temporarily post- 
poned, was sooner or later inevitable. 

No people surely, on either side, ever shouldered the 
musket to sustain a cause with more faithfulness to 
ideas, stronger convictions of public duty, than did the 
Southern and the Northern in the present struggle ; the 
one devoted to his State, the other to the Union; and 
the progress of the civil strife gave, too, to moral agi- 
tators their share in the glory of results. For, under 
the circumstances, nothing but the appeal to rally round 
the flag and preserve the public property, the constitu- 
tion, and the laws, could have united the loyal people 
to the northward, irrespective of past party ties, in so 
splendid a demonstration. And nothing, moreover, as 
events went on, but the downfall and destruction of 
that whole pernicious system which was at the root of 
all the great troubles of the century, and obstructed the 
destiny and growth of the American people in homo- 
geneous grandeur, would have made the Union 
worth sustaining through the long, costly, and calami- 



396 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

tous strife, or kept the North constant to bear it 
through. 



Washington at this time wore the aspect of a be- 
leaguered city. Thanks to the energy and foresight of 
General Scott, and the cabinet coterie which saved 
Buchanan from ignominious shame, there were now 
over six hundred troops stationed at the national capi- 
tal, exclusive of marines at the navy yard, to preserve 
order and peace at the coming inauguration. 

There was trepidation and excitement in this city — 
the whole aspect of its society rapidly changing already 
by the exodus of the Southern, now disloyal element, 
which had given it character. Slovenly and thread- 
bare still, this only child of the nation gained yet some- 
thing in attractiveness before colossal events were to 
make the city historical. A grand aqueduct, with water 
supply from the falls of the Potomac, was among the 
greatest of its more recent enterprises. Still stood the 
familiar White House upon the executive reservation 
at the west end, with three drab buildings of brick, 
which housed the State department on one side, and the 
war and the navy on the other ; but the granite exten- 
sions of the treasury, superadding noble fronts at north 
and south to the old sandstone colonnade, promised a 
more imposing architecture. Down on the flats of the 
Potomac was seen the marble shaft of the monument 
to Washington, long to remain unfinished, now that the 
older sentiment of personal veneration failed for a 
sectional cement. On yonder beautiful heights of 
Capitol Hill spread out the white, unfolded wings of 
the national legislature like an eagle on its perpetual 
perch ; but the grand central dome was as yet but par- 



WASHINGTON IN 1861 397 

tially completed, and its full spans of glass and iron were 
wanting. It was long before that central dome was 
finished ; longer, far longer, before the disused derrick 
upon that Washington obelisk was to give place that 
earnest work might carry its shaft to the clouds. But 
regeneration preceded harmony; and when that dome 
was completed, and the great bronze statue of liberty, 
already designed for it, had been placed in position at 
its apex, a brighter and broader horizon was swept by 
the vision. That metal figure emblematized a spirit 
which, often and often invoked in the temple below 
with the grandest, richest eloquence of which man is 
capable, had never gazed before with so real a meaning 
at the eastern sun. 



SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER. 

ADMINISTRATION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN. 
March 4, 1861-April 15, 1865. 

f f ** r ^HERE lies the most perfect ruler of men 
the world has ever seen!" said Secretary 
_A_ Stanton in tears, at this President's death- 
couch; and probably for a eulogy so brief, no fitter 
one could have been pronounced. Well did that 
stern subordinate — headstrong, impulsive, born to 
be unpopular — realize how much of his own splen- 
did opportunity and success in achieving he owed 
to that generous and genial direction. Abraham Lin- 
coln need hardly be compared with the great rulers of 
mankind in other ages and countries; it is enough to 
take him in his most admirable adaptation to the age 
and country in which his destiny was cast. He clearly 
understood the thirty millions of Americans over whom 
he had been placed by the people's choice, and the tre- 
mendous task given him by his Maker to be accom- 
plished. Lincoln was not a profound scholar, but his 
mind was acute and his logical faculties clear and 
active; he had a lawyer's self-culture to comprehend the 
relations of republican society; he had studied Ameri- 
can political history and problems of government, and 
no one understood better his country's institutions, 
State and national, in their practical workings. He 
had fair public experience, besides; and his excellence 
as an administrator in affairs lay in his consummate 



LINCOLN AS PRESIDENT 399 

tact and skill as a manager and director of political 
forces under the complex and composite system of our 
American government. His high qualifications in this 
respect were first made manifest in his own important 
State of Illinois; and, though not among the chief 
founders of the new national party which brought him 
into the Presidency, he promptly came forward as one 
of its leaders, and, once placed in direction, he guided 
it confidently for the rest of his life, unapproachable as 
chieftain and popular inspirer. As President of the 
United States he harnessed together the greatest intel- 
lects of this party — statesmen diverse as the winds in 
temper and sentiment, better capable than himself to 
push forward the car of legislation or handle the multi- 
farious details of executive work ; and he held the reins 
over them with infinite considerateness and discretion, 
conciliating, assuaging rivalries, maintaining good 
humor, and encouraging each to his greatest work. He 
kept his cabinet in the closest touch with Congress, and 
both cabinet and Congress in generous accord with 
public opinion, which last he carefully watched and 
tilled like a good gardener, planting seed, nurturing 
the growth of new ideas, and bringing, in proper time, 
the ripe fruit. Raw haste, the falsehood of extremes 
on one side or the other, he sedulously avoided ; yet he 
sowed and cultivated. And, once again, while con- 
ducting the cause of the whole Union, of national in- 
tegrity, he was yet highly regardful of State pride and 
State magistracy, seeking not suppression, but assist- 
ance, as to this element of allegiance ; and the harshest 
military rigor he ever exercised over State rebellion 
was tempered by clemency, forgiveness, and compas- 
sion. Not an insurgent commonwealth of the South 
did he attempt to reorganize and reconstruct, save 



4 oo EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

through the spontaneous aid of its own recognized in- 
habitants and such native and natural leaders of the 
jurisdiction as were found available; while of border 
slave States, at first doubtful and wavering in alle- 
giance, because of a divided interest and affection, the 
two that he grappled most violently became not only 
stanch to the Union, but converts to emancipation, from 
their own choice, before war ended. The armed 
potency, almost unexampled, which this President ex- 
ercised through four distressful years, was always ex- 
ercised unselfishly and as a patriot, in the name and for 
the welfare of the real constitutional government which 
he represented, and for the permanent welfare of the 
whole American people. Rarely leaving and never 
going far from the nation's capital during that entire 
period, he there came in contact with people from all 
parts of the land — soldiers and civilians, men, women, 
and children — and by his rare personality, in whose 
external expression pathos and humor were remarkably 
blended, he dispelled unfavorable prejudice and en- 
deared himself gradually to all classes of our people, at 
the same time giving reassurance as of one genuine, 
self-possessed, and trustworthy, who knew well his 
responsibilities and was capable of exercising them. 

Lincoln was an American of Americans, the best 
and noblest type of an indigenous democracy, such as 
several generations of native independence and self- 
government had developed in lowly life. He was the 
ideal of the common American voter — the common citi- 
zen — sharing with the average of our race the wish to 
better, honorably, the conditions of humble origin; 
proud of his own native land, and desirous that its 
example to the world should be unblemished. Like 
the vast majority of Americans, he was conservative 



LINCOLN'S CHARACTER 401 

while in progression, and loved that liberty which 
comes protected by law. Cautious, practical, and with 
a homely sagacity, notwithstanding high ideals, he 
yielded not to theory, but to trial, respected customs, 
and pursued the plans of life with wondrous patience 
and perseverance. Father of his country, as Emerson 
has well said of him, the pulse of many millions 
throbbed in his heart, and their thought was articulated 
by his tongue. Even as Washington was the typical 
ruler for a generation bred to traditions of royalty and 
privilege, so Lincoln suited the common conception for 
a people long confident of themselves. With him, ad- 
ventitious birth or wealth went for little; but he 
weighed all men by their intrinsic worth, giving to each 
the due ponderance that personal character had won, 
and avoiding falsehood, whether of the social theorist, 
who treats dunces and the wise alike, or of the dema- 
gogue, who courts meanness only. God's greatest 
miracles on earth have been wrought out of natural 
elements, and His greatest tasks committed to men of 
true, steadfast hearts and simple faith. If this Presi- 
dent had no great erudition, in him were happily com- 
bined, at least, the qualities for conducting a great social 
change — a strong intellect, convictions strong when 
once formed, a hardy physical frame, sound moral 
sense, and a persevering will. 

After all, the real ruler of mankind, and especially 
of a vigorous and intelligent community, is he who can 
rule himself ; and to that type of men Lincoln certainly 
belonged. He was plain in manners, unostentatious, 
unaffected, free, to a remarkable degree, from vindic- 
tiveness or fierce passion. Cheery and good-natured by 
disposition, calm, and even jocular, while others were 
angry or excited, he would show displeasure by raised 



4 o2 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

eyebrows, closed lips, or a clench of the hand; but re- 
sentment with him seldom went further, and in action 
he was just, magnanimous, and bore no malice. The 
display of others' foibles amused more than it offended 
him, while for real sorrow and suffering he mourned in 
sympathy. Though a giant in stature he had a 
woman's tenderness of heart, and he sorrowed deeply 
over the calamities that necessity compelled him to in- 
flict. Ambitious we may well suppose him to have 
been, but his ambition was of that lofty and laudable 
kind that prompts to the general good. From earliest 
childhood he had known what it was to strive and 
struggle upward against the world's disdainful regard, 
yet experience of life made him not crabbed, but kind- 
hearted, and the poem whose bosom-lines he most loved 
to repeat rebuked the spirit of mortal pride and taught 
a chastening lesson. No high ruler ever showed less 
the caste of race or station in demeanor; and it was 
Frederick Douglass, the man of colored skin, who pro- 
nounced him free from that condescending manner 
that had impressed him much among other philan- 
thropic friends of his race. It was, indeed, his broad 
range of sympathy, and his keen appreciation of human 
nature, with all its faults and failings, that kept him so 
close to the common heart. Lincoln took the world as 
he found it, with always a disposition to make it better. 
Holding before followers and the country the loftiest 
ideals of public duty, while capable at the same time of 
using the selfishness of others for the good of the cause, 
he required no sordid or selfish abuse of official spoils, 
no cunning organisms of petty tyranny, for keeping 
himself secure in power ; and it was the popular intui- 
tion that seldom errs which secured his re-election for 
another term, rather than that cunning thwart of oppo- 



LINCOLN'S CHARACTER 403 

sition which picks out delegates and shuts rivals from 
the suffrage of the people. 

Lincoln was, to a singular extent, representative of 
the whole American people, the component of all sec- 
tions of the United States. He foresaw and foretold 
that in the great struggle between North and South 
neither side could afford to disbelieve in the courage 
and intrepidity of the other. He had the unfailing 
courtesy and honor of a Kentuckian born; but, unlike 
Henry Clay, he was, in manners and modes of thought, 
a denizen north of the Ohio River. He had the ingen- 
ious fertility for contrivance of a New England Yankee, 
with, at the same time, the breezy and unconventional 
boldness of the Westerner. He approached the social 
problem of his age with an average Northern man's 
objective dislike of slavery, and yet with something, 
moreover, of the subjective misgivings over emancipa- 
tion which were felt by border slaveholders and the 
more humane of Southern masters. We may recall the 
various expedients he employed to lighten the coming 
blow, rather than offend susceptibilities. So, too, as 
new areas of the South were regained, or made secure, 
his capacity was shown for soothing Southern fellow- 
citizens, allaying their former misconceptions, and 
reconciling their hearts to the new order of things. In 
short, as Lincoln's biographers* have well pointed out, 
his blood was drawn from the veins of every section of 
the Union; and of East, Middle, South, together with 
pioneer civilizing growth in the great Northwest, his 
nature equally partook. 

Lincoln's peculiar methods as President have been 
observed in the course of our narrative. f He was true 
and steadfast to his main public purpose, a present in- 
* 10 N. & H. final chapter, t See Vol. VI. 



4 o 4 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

spiration, clearly conceiving the immediate duty to be 
performed, but borrowing as little trouble as possible 
for the far future. Eminently practical in statesman- 
ship, his exhortation was to action, and he disinclined 
to hamper himself by schemes which might not readily 
yield to circumstances and a coming exigency. "My 
policy," he would say, "is to have no policy;" not in- 
tending this literally, but so that political convenience, 
or the mercy of exceptions, should give to formulas all 
needful corrective. "I do not cross Fox River until I 
come to it," was another saying of his; yet he well ap- 
prehended the general direction in which he headed, 
and simply made his way from point to point, with 
cautious circumspection, and throwing out skirmishers, 
so to speak. He thought and felt with the common 
people, or rather so as to educate them to change with 
himself ; hence expressions, like his point of view, might 
shift, though in general exhortation he was sound and 
consistent. It is now conceded that he chose precisely 
the right moment, neither too soon nor too tardy, for 
issuing his edict of emancipation, so as to give it actual 
effect ; and so, too, was his time well selected for giving 
permanent and comprehensive force to this new 
national policy by the sound process of constitutional 
amendment. In all things patient and incessantly pur- 
suing, his mind would turn to indirect experiment for 
gaining the desired end, or so at least as to force the 
conviction that expedients were useless. He liked to 
approach reform by the flank before assaulting. "Peg- 
ging away," to use his homely phrase, as of one indus- 
trious over an humble manual toil, he rounded out his 
work by dint of a sound intelligence honestly and with 
constancy applied. For, carefully though he watched 
the growth of public opinion, and heedful not to get 



LINCOLN'S CHARACTER 405 

too far away, he formed and guided opinion, and was 
no mere waiter for other men. He took the public into 
his full confidence, and, by message, speech, or open 
letter, would utter plainly his views and purpose upon 
critical occasions. 

From one of such tenderness and broad affiliation 
with his fellow-men, one whose favorite weapon had 
been argument, and not compulsion, this long and san- 
guinary strife, more bitter and protracted than he him- 
self or most other countrymen could possibly have an- 
ticipated, must have truly been a fearful strain. Yet 
of the wrestlings and agonies in soul that this President 
underwent, the world knew little beyond noting the 
ghastliness he would present, with sunken cheeks and 
hollow eyes, after a night's secret vigil of sorrow, while 
no words but cheerful ones escaped his lips. His 
prayerful communings in secret must have been deep 
and fervent. Few men ever lived with nerves and a 
constitution to bear responsibilities like these. But he 
would relax the tension of mind by abandoning himself 
to frolic and play with his children in the inner apart- 
ments of the White House, or by observing the humor- 
ous aspect of scenes about him in his audience chamber, 
or by reading, with keen zest, the pages of native 
humorists, such as Artemus Ward,* who touched off 
American life in phases familiar to him. With the 
jocose manner habitual to him, and little pleasantries 
towards those whom he happened to accost, he would 
throw off the burdensome anxieties that must other- 
wise have broken him down. Lincoln's rare vein of 
humor, as disclosed in the many authentic stories and 

* It was with a chapter from this author that, much to Stanton's 
disgust, the President regaled his Cabinet, before introducing the 
historical proclamation with its graver exordium. 6 N. & H. 158. 



4 o6 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

pithy sayings of his, long since recorded, make him 
stand out, fresh and original as a public personage, 
like those early heroes, Greek or Roman, whose lives 
and characters are described by anecdotes. The 
piquant zest of whatever he might say was heightened 
by a quaint dialect and the flavor of a singular personal 
experience; yet many of his parables were doubtless in- 
vented or adapted, on the spur of the moment, to en- 
force some argument, or, as often happened, to ward 
off inquiries from others too pointed and searching. 
Of all rulers who pleased in intercourse, this one, while 
truthful, was shrewdest in fencing where he was not 
prepared to express; but on great occasions, strong 
impulses came welling up from that noble heart, and 
great thoughts found a most adequate utterance. For, 
in spite of a rare inelegance of metaphor, such as would 
grate upon ears polite, Lincoln was a master of style, 
and, while Chief Executive, wrote more that was clear, 
forcible, and simply eloquent in literary prose, and sure 
of enduring, than any other American of that eventful 
period. He was not only first among historical actors 
of this Civil War, but its ablest contemporary inter- 
preter besides. 

If not wholly free from the commission of minor 
faults, this Chief Executive was remarkably exempt, 
as an administrator, from radical error. He was quite 
at home in American politics ; his memory of faces was 
wonderful, and he knew well or learned readily the 
statesmen and managers of his times, and took in their 
characters, one by one, their personal appearance, and 
their means of helpfulness to his public purposes. He 
was true to those purposes, honest and to be depended 
on. He trusted the loyal people, and the loyal people 
trusted him in return; their predilections were for 



FAME OF LINCOLN 407 

peace, and so were his own; and hence for war much 
had to be learned. As our narrative has shown, it was 
not in the civilian, but the military aspect of his Presi- 
dency that he was seen to grope, to feel out fallibly, to 
make imperfect estimates of character and capacity, 
like the average of those at the North who stood behind 
him. Yet, for all this, he grew in military discretion 
and knowledge with the years, and, though never pre- 
tending to be a technical soldier, he learned to give here 
a correct supervision, as in all other matters pertaining 
to a ruler. He experimented with generals of differing 
temperaments and credentials; he watched campaigns 
intently in their progress, and studied the battles; nor 
would he rest, day or night, until the generals were 
found who could command and conquer. To the 
greatest of these, as to all others, he gave freely and 
honorably of the nation's resources, and the fullest con- 
fidence deserved. As for war itself, he must have felt 
like Washington, who declared, when at the same stage 
of human experience, "My first wish is to see this 
plague of mankind banished from off the earth." 

The fame of Abraham Lincoln, enhanced by the 
deep pity felt for his sad and sudden taking off — the 
martyrdom of a misconception — has reached the stars, 
and will spread and endure so long as human rights 
and human freedom are held sacred. For Americans 
his name is imperishably joined with that of Washing- 
ton, under the designation, "Father," which no others 
yet have borne — the one saviour and founder, the other, 
preserver and liberator. Washington's work was as 
completely finished as one great human life could make 
it ; and had Lincoln been spared to the end of the Presi- 
dency for which he was rechosen, the capstone to his 
monument would surely have been inscribed "Recon- 



4 o8 EIGHTY YEARS OF UNION 

ciler." For no man of his times could so wisely and 
powerfully, or would so earnestly, have applied him- 
self to the compassionate task of binding together the 
broken ligaments of national brotherhood and infusing 
through the body politic once more the spirit of com- 
mon harmony and content. Nothing but the clouds of 
false prejudice and rumor could anywhere have ob- 
scured or prevented the rays of so warming and regen- 
erating a personal influence. 

Note. — The scope and limit of this book forbid more than a 
single selection from the author's sixth and final volume. The 
concluding pages of that volume are embraced in the foregoing 
extract ; and for a full and concise narrative of the whole Civil 
War, in its political and military aspects, during the entire period 
of Abraham Lincoln's memorable administration, the reader is 
kindly referred to the author's sixth volume of "History of the 
United States," which, as a separate work, is known as "History 
of the Civil War." 



INDEX 



Abolition. (See Slavery.) 

Adams, John, 9; Vice-Presi- 
dent, 17; President, 59, 70; 
character, 72, 212, 239; the 
two Adamses, 217. 

Adams, John Quincy, 166, 191 ; 
President, 214, 224; the two 
Adamses, 217; in the House, 
271; death, 337. 

Adams, Samuel, 9. 

Agriculture, 132. 

Alabama, 212, 366. 

Alien act, 62. 

Alleghany Mountains, 250. 

American character, 240; man- 
ners, 243; business, 245; in- 
dustry, 246. 

American party, 369. 

Ames, Fisher, 37, 54. 

Anti-Masons, 254, 273, 369. 

Anti-Nebraska party, 388. 

Arkansas, 188, 367. 

Army, 145, 317. (See Dis- 
union.) 

Ashburton Treaty, 315. 

Astor, William, 246. 

Badger, George E., 368. 
Bainbridge, Captain William, 

152. 
Baldwin, Henry, 282. 
Bancroft, George, 340. 



Bank, 149, 293. 
Barbour, Philip P., 283. 
Barlow, Joel, 196. 
Bates, Edward, 388. 
Benton, Thomas H., 234, 312. 
Bernard, General, 164. 
Bibb, William W., 139. 
Bills of Rights, 131. 
Blennerhassett, Herman, 106. 
Blue lights, 153. 
Bolivar, General, 180, 242. 
Bonaparte, Napoleon, 68, 90, 

Boston, 165, 354. 

Boundaries of United States 
(1783), 2; (1849) 312, 323, 
344- 

Brazil, 171. 

Breckinridge, John, 64. 

Brown, John, 385. 

Buchanan, James, 340; Presi- 
dent, 374, 390, 391. 

Buenos Ayres, 170. 

Burns, Marcia, 196. 

Burr, Aaron, 70; duel, 93; 
conspiracy, 106; death, 108. 

Business, American, 245. 

Cadiz, 204. 

Cadore letter, 137, 138. 
Calhoun, John C, 66, 141, 192, 
201 ; Vice-President, 215, 



4io 



INDEX 



229, 250, 255; in the Senate, 
258, 313, 394- 

California, 320, 345, 347- 

Canals, 226, 268. 

Canning, George, 203. 

Capitol, 45* 69, 195, 396. 

Carroll, Daniel, 158. 

Cass, Lewis, 355, 375. 

Census of 1820, 199. 

Central America, 370. 

Character, American, 240. 

Charleston Convention, 391. 

Charlestown, riots in, 370. 

Chase, Salmon P., 389. 

Chatham, Earl of, 338. 

Chicago, 249, 386. 

Chili, 170. 

Chippewa, 326. 

Choate, Rufus, 355. 

Cholera, 345. 

Cincinnati, 248, 355. 

Civil War, 395. 

Clarkson, Mayor, 47, 50. 

Clay, Henry, 139, 145, 166, 191, 
254, 355 ; death, 357, 403. 

Clayton, John M., 255, 368. 

Clinton, De Witt, 200, 327. 

Clinton, George, 9, 14. 

Cobden, Richard, 321. 

Commerce, 132. (See Em- 
bargo.) 

Compromise, Missouri (1820), 
187-189; (1850) 355, 366, 367, 
Missouri compact broken, 

367- 
Congress, first and second, 14; 
third and fourth, 39; fifth 
and sixth, 59; seventh and 
eighth, 83; ninth and tenth, 
104; eleventh and twelfth, 
136; thirteenth and four- 



teenth, 147; fifteenth and 
sixteenth, 157; seventeenth 
and eighteenth, 190; nine- 
teenth and twentieth, 214; 
twenty-first and twenty-sec- 
ond, 228; twenty-third and 
twenty-fourth, 261 ; twenty- 
fifth and twenty-sixth, 293 ; 
twenty-seventh, 301, 304; 
twenty-eighth, 304 ; twenty- 
ninth and thirtieth, 317; thir- 
ty-first, 343, 352; thirty-sec- 
ond, 352 ; thirty-third and 
thirty- fourth, 362 ; thirty- 
fifth and thirty-sixth, 374; 
thirty-seventh, 398. 

Connecticut, 274. 

Constitutions, State, 129. 

Conventions. (See Parties.) 

Cooper, Thomas, 39. 

Corday, Charlotte, 385. 

Corwin, Thomas, 343. 

Crawford, William H., 167, 
191. 

Crittenden, John J., 355. 

Cuba, 370, 383. 

Dallas, Alexander J., 54, 149. 
Danites, 376. 
Daschkoff, 191. 

Davis, Jefferson, 334, 365, 382. 
Davis, John, 272. 
Dayton, Jonathan, 56-60. 
Dayton, William L., 372. 
Democrats (see Parties), 62, 

171, 172, 173, 375, 386. 
De Tocqueville, 238. 
Detroit, 250. 
Dexter, Samuel, 78. 
Disunion movements, 383, 384, 

390, 391, 392. 



INDEX 



411 



Dix, John A., 339. 

Douglas, Stephen A., 363, 375, 

37*. 
Douglass, Frederick, 402. 
Downing, Jack, 267. 
Duane, William, 98. 
Dutch customs, 243. 

Edwards, Jonathan, 56. 

Elections, Presidential (1789), 
17; (1792) 39; (1796) 59; 
(1800) 70; (1804) 104; 
(1808) 136; (1812) 147; 
(1816) 153; (1820) 190; 
(1824) 214; (1828) 228; 
(1832) 261, (1836) 293; 
(1840) 301; (1844) 317; 
(1848) 343; (1852) 362; 
(1856) 374; (i860) 398. 

Electoral tie, 71. (See Elec- 
tions.) 

Ellsworth, Oliver, 61. 

Embargo, 112. 

England. (See Great Britain.) 

Equal Rights party, 275. 

Erie, 201, 226. 

Europe (see Great Britain, 
France, Spain, etc. ; Mon- 
roe doctrine), 203. 

Everett, Edward, 371, 387. 

Farmers. (See Pioneer Life.) 

Federalism (see Parties), 12; 
downfall of, 79; blue lights, 
153 ; the Hartford Conven- 
tion, 153, 235, 251. 

Ferdinand VII, 170. 

Fillmore, Millard, 295 ; Presi- 
dent, 352; character, 360. 

Financial Distress (1819-20), 
181; (1837) 293. 



Fisheries, American, 133. 

Florida, 178, 326. 

Floyd, John B., 393. 

Foote, Henry S., 234. 

Force bill (1833), 255. 

Fort Dearborn, 249. 

Fort Sumpter, 392. 

Fourier, 246. 

France, contest with England, 
51; spoliations, 222. (See 
Bonaparte.) 

Franklin, Benjamin, 9, 35, 239. 

Free Soilers. (See Republi- 
cans.) 

Fremont, John C, 372. 

French spoliations, 222. 

Fugitive slaves, 307. (See 
Slavery.) 

Fulton, Robert, 201, 269. 

Gadsby's Tavern, 197, 228. 

Gaines, Gen. Edmund P., 327. 

Gallatin. Albert, 63, 96. 

Garibaldi, Joseph, 242. 

Garrison, William Lloyd, 280. 

Genet, Citizen, 51. 

Georgia, 185. 

Gerry, Elbridge, 78. 

Ghent, peace of, 149. 

Girard, Stephen, 50, 246. 

Gold, California, 345. 

Granger, Francis, 295. 

Great Britain, contest with 
France, 51; grievances 
against, 52; Jay's mission 
and treaty, 52; Napoleon, 
m; war against. 145; peace 
at Ghent, 149; relations 
(1817-31), 203. 

Greece, 242. 

Greeley, Horace, 295, 334. 



412 



INDEX 



Greenleaf, 69. 
Grund, 2.38. 
Grundy, Felix, 255. 

Hamilton, Alexander, 5, 18, 
24, 37, 54, 64, 90; duel, 93; 
death, 95, 239. 

Hancock, John, 9, 47. 

Harper, Robert G., 63. 

Harrison, William Henry, 
President, 301 ; death, 302. 

Hartford Convention, 153, 235, 

251- 
Hayne, Robert Y., 233. 
Helm, Peter, 50. 
Henry, Patrick, 9, 102. 
Hill, Rowland, 324. 
Holy Alliance, 203. 
Houston, Samuel, 371, 385. 
Hudson River, 201, 243. 
Hull, Captain Isaac, 152. 

Illinois, 249, 378, 386. 

Impressment, 104, 145. 

Inauguration of Washington, 
17; of John Adams, 59; of 
Jefferson, 83; of Madison, 
136; of Monroe, 157; of John 
Quincy Adams, 214; of Jack- 
son, 228, 262; of Van 
Buren, 293 ; of Harrison, 
301 ; of Tyler, 304 ; of Polk, 
317; of Taylor, 343; of Fill- 
more, 352; of Pierce, 362; of 
Buchanan, 374, 

Indians, 98, 326. 

Industries, American, 133, 246. 

Inns, American, 197, 228. 

Internal Improvements, 173, 
232, 253. 

Iredell, Judge James, 56. 

Irving, Washington, 243. 



Jackson, Andrew, 153, 160, 
175, 191; President, 228; 
force-bill message, 255 ; sec- 
ond administration, 261 ; his 
tour, 265 ; character, 284 ; 
Jackson and Jefferson, 177, 
291. 

Jay, John, 9, 15, 70, 89. 

Jefferson, Thomas, 8, 24, 37; 
Vice-President, 59, 63, 65, 
70; President, 83; appoint- 
ments, 87; cabinet, 89; sec- 
ond administration, 104; re- 
tirement, 119; character, 121, 
177, 239, 291. 

Jeffersonian Republicans, 165, 
173, 297. 

Jeffersonian, The, 297. 

Jones, Captain Jacob, 152. 

Jones, James C, 368. 

Kalorama, 196. 
Kansas-Nebraska Bill, 363, 

366, 370. 
Kendall, Amos, 324. 
Kentucky resolutions, 64, 235. 
King, Rufus, 383. 
Know- Nothings, 369. 
Knox, Henry, 15, 18, 24. 
Kossuth, Louis, 242, 

Lafayette, 32, 165, 211. 

Lane, Henry S., 372. 

La Plata, 170. 

Lawrence, Amos A., 246. 

Lecompton, 379. 

Liberator, The, 280. 

Liberty and Union, 237. 

Lincoln, Abraham, 334, 335, 
377; the Illinois Debate, 378, 
381; nomination of, 389; 



INDEX 



413 



President, 398; character of, 

400; fame of, 407. 
Livingston, Edward, 15, 18, 

54, 90, 201. 
Lloyd, James, 165. 
Loco-Focos, 273. 
Louisiana purchase, 90, 212, 

239. 
Lundy's Lane, 326. 

Madison, James, 5, 63, 65, 96; 
President, 136, 147; charac- 
ter, 154. 

Madrid, 170. 

Maine, 212. 

Manhattan Island, 243. 

Manners, American, 243. 

Manufacturers, American, 132. 

Marbois, 90. 

Marcy, William L., 333- 

Marshall, John, 78, 158, 212, 
282. 

Martineau, Harriet, 238. 

Maryland, 196, 212. 

Massachusetts, 12, 212, 239. 

McKean, Thomas, 54. 

McLean, John, 282. 

Methodist Church, 372. 

Mexico, 317, 322, 331. 

Miranda enterprise, 170. 

Mississippi, 366, (river), 249. 

Missouri, 187 ; compromise 
(1820), 189, 365; repealed, 

367, 383. 

Monroe, James, 90; President, 
153. 157, 161, 163, 165; char- 
acter of, 190; appearance of, 
193; retires, 213. 

Monroe doctrine, 205. 

Montgomery Congress, 394. 

Morgan, William, 255. 



Mormonism, 376. 
Morris, Robert, 9, 69. 
Muhlenberg, Frederick A., 54, 
56. 

Napoleon. (See Bonaparte.) 
Nashville, 355. 
National Banks, 273. 
Native Americans, 369. (See 

Parties.) 
Naturalization Act, 62. 
Nebraska, 363. 
Negroes. (See Slavery.) 
New Hampshire, 212. 
New Mexico, 343. 
New Orleans, 345. 
New York, 200, 212, 232, 274, 

355- 
Nicholson, 69. 
Non-intercourse, 137. (See 

Great Britain.) 
Nullification, 66, 232, 254. 

(See Disunion.) 

Ohio, 200. 

Orders in Council, 116, 138, 

145. (See Great Britain.) 
Ordinance of 1787, 188, 365. 
Oregon boundary, 320. 
Osgood, Samuel, 15. 
Otis, Harrison Gray, 153. 
Otis, James, 9, 18. 

Paraguay, 170. 

Parties, political, origin of, 9; 
Whig and Tory in America, 
11; Revolutionary, 12; Fed- 
eral and Anti-Federal, 12; 
Republicans, 36; ultra Fed- 
eralists, 70; downfall of 
Federal, 79; War party, 143; 



414 



INDEX 



Democrats, 165; JefTersonian 
Republicans, 165; decay of, 
173 ; Democratic Republi- 
cans, 173; new party ideals, 
215 ; National Republicans, 
253; Democrats, 273, 277; 
Anti-Masons, 254; Whigs, 
274, 3531 Equal Rights par- 
ty, 275 ; downfall of Whigs, 
359 ; New Party movements, 
368 ; Native American, 
Know-Nothing Party, 369 ; 
the Republican party, 372, 
373, 388; Democracy per- 
verted, 375, 386; Chicago 
Convention, 386. 

Pearce, James A., 368. 

Peel, Sir Robert, 320. 

Pennsylvania, 200, 232, 239. 

Perceval Cabinet, 138. 

Perry, Oliver H., 152, 179. 

Personal liberty laws, 307. 

Philadelphia, 45, 355. 370, 372. 

Pickering, Timothy, 61. 

Pierce, Franklin, 359; Presi- 
dent, 362, 375. 

Pinckney, Charles, 70. 

Pioneer life, 40. 

Pittsburg, 372. 

Polk, James K., 311; Presi- 
dent, 317; character, 339. 

Population of United States 
(1783), 3; (1820) 199. 

Portugal, 170, 197. 

Potomac, 396. 

Pottawatomies, 249. 

President. (See Elections; In- 
auguration.) 

Princeton College, 8. 

Provoost, Bishop Samuel, 20. 

Public disorders, 279. 



Quincy, Josiah, 141. 
Quitman, John A., 384. 

Railways, 268. 

Randolph, Edmund, 24, 139. 

Randolph, John, 141, 215. 

Religion in the United States, 
369, 370, 372, 376. , 

Republicans, 36; National Jef- 
fersonian, 165, 253 ; New 
Republican party of 1856, 
372, 386. (See Parties.) 

Revolutionary parties, 12. 

Rhett, Robert B., 382. 

Rocky Mountains, 250. 

Roman Catholic Church, 370. 

Rush, Richard, 47, 203, 355. 

Rutledge, John, 54. 

Schuyler, General Philip J., 6. 

Scott, Dred, 380, 383. 

Scott, Winfield, 325, 326, 359, 
396. 

Search, right of, 104. 

Secession. (See Disunion.) 

Sedition act, 62. 

Seminole war, 177, 178, 326. 

Sergeant, John, 355. 

Seward, William H., 295, 347, 
366, 381, 388. 

Single-Term Theory, 308. 

Slavery: abolition memorials, 
35 ; trade abolished, 108 : 
condition of, in 1819, 182 ; 
Missouri controversy, 187 ; 
Garrison and The Liberator, 
280; slavery and freedom, 
307 ; admission of Texas, 
312 ; Kansas-Nebraska plot, 
367; Dred Scott decision, 
380; new dogmas, 383. 

Small-pox, 47. 



INDEX 



4i5 



Smithsonian Institute, 324. 

South America, 204. 

South Carolina, 185, 212, 232, 

233, 239; in 1833, 257, 391. 
Sovereignty, squatter, 365. 
Spanish America, revolution 

in, 169, 242. 
Spanish coin, 181. 
Spoils of office, 231. 
Squatter sovereignty, 365. 
Stanton, Edwin M., 398. 
State rights, 251, 273. 
States. (See Several States.) 
Steamboats, 201, 269. 
Stephens, Alexander H., 347, 

368, 382. 
Stephenson, George, 269. 
St. Louis, 250. 
Steuben, Baron, 18. 
Stoddert, Benjamin, 78. 
Story, Joseph, 282. 
Supreme Court, 282. 

Taney, Roger B., 283. 

Tariff act (1824), 207; (1828), 
232, 252; reduction (1845), 
321. 

Taylor, John W., 65. 

Taylor, Zachary, 325 ; Presi- 
dent, 343; death, 350. 

Tecumseh, 325. 

Telegraph, 311, 325. 

Tennessee, 176, 232, 365. 

Territories, 99. (See Different 
Territories.) 

Texas, annexation, 310, 312, 
323- 

Thompson, Jacob, 393. 

Thomson, Charles, 16. 

Tippecanoe, battle of, 139. 

Tompkins, Daniel D., 157. 



Toombs, Robert, 349, 368. 
Tories, 11. (See Parties.) 
Treasury, independent (sub-), 

293. 

Treaty, Jay's, 52; for Louis- 
iana, 90; of Ghent, 149; as 
to Texas, Mexico, etc., 310, 
322, 331 ; Ashburton, 315 ; 
Oregon, 320. 

Trimble amendment, 188. 

Trollope, Mrs., 240, 247. 

Twiggs, General David E., 
393- 

Tyler, John, President, 304, 

305, 314. 

United States (1809), 127; 

(1820) 199; (1831) 238. 
Utah, 344, 375- 

Van Buren, Martin, Vice- 
President, 262 ; President, 
293 ; character, 297. 

Van Ness, John P., 196. 

Venezuela, 170. 

Virginia, 64, 200, 235, 273. 

Walker, Robert J., 342. 

War. (See Army, Indians, 
Mexico, Navy.) 

Ward, Artemus, 267, 405. 

Washington, George, 4, 9, 14, 
15, 407; President, 17; char- 
acter, 26; farewell address, 
57, 59; death, 67, 239. 

Washington City, 68; (1821) 
195; (1861) 396. 

Watts, James, 269. 

Webster, Daniel, 165, 208, 211, 
235, 355 ; death, 358. 

Weed, Thurlow, 295, 297. 



4i6 



INDEX 



West, the great, 249. 

Whigs, 12, 273, 275, 353 ; down- 
fall, 359. (See Parties.) 

White House, 101, 396. 

Wilkinson, General Arthur, 
106, 327. 

Wilmot, David, 332, 333; pro- 
viso, 364. 

Winthrop, Robert C, 338. 



Wirt, William, 107, 204. 
Wise, Henry A., 303, 385. 
Wolcott, Oliver, 69. 
Woodbury, Levi, 355. 
Wright, Silas, 295, 311. 

Yellow fever, 47. 
Yellowstone River, 250. 
Young, Brigham, 376. 



THE END 



«3 



s 



